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HE OPEN DOOR 




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BY 

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SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT 



THE OPEN DOOR 




Henry van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. 



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THE OPEN DOOR 



BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE 

Moderator of the One Hundred and Fourteenth General Assembly 
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America 



PHILADELPHIA 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 

1903 






THE LIBRARY 0F 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

APR 27 1903 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS C^ XXc No, 

SI ^ ^^ 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1903, by 
HENRY VAN DYKE. 



Published April, igoj 



'0 



CONTENTS 



I 



I. The Open Door 

II. Resurrection Now . 

III. A Divine Impossibility . 

IV. Salt 

V. A Brief for Foreign Missions 

VI. The Making of St. John 

VII. The Angel of God's Face 

VIII. Real Life .... 



3 

25 

43 

63 

85 

109 

125 

149 



THE OPEN DOOR 



THE OPEN DOOR 



THE OPEN DOORi 

" I am the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, 
and shall go in and out, and find pasture." — John x, 9. 

Christ taught by pictures as well as by para- 
bles. He came into the world to be the Saviour 
of men. What that meant in all its fullness could 
not be put into any doctrine, any theory, any 
description. So Christ looked around Him in 
the world of life, and whatever He saw that was 
beautiful and useful and precious He claimed and 
used as a picture of Himself 

'' You do not know," He said to men, " you do 
not know what my coming to you really means. 
You think that I have come merely to teach you 
something or perhaps to do something for you. 
No : I have come to be something in your life. 
All that is best and most needful and most glo- 

^ Moderator's sermon at the One Hundred and Fourteenth 
General Assembly, New York, May, 18, 1902. 

3 



4 THE OPEN DOOR 

rious is but a type and symbol of what I am. I 
am the bread of heaven, I am the water of hfe, I 
am the hght of the world, I am the true vine, I 
am the good shepherd, I am the lamb of God, I 
am the way, the truth, and the life." 

Among these '' I ams " of Christ, the picture in 
the text, *' I am the door," seems at first lowly 
and commonplace, not worthy to be compared 
with the other images which our Lord uses to 
reveal Himself A door is an ordinary affair, 
made by man, for an everyday purpose. We 
pass through a hundred doors daily without 
noticing them. But think for a moment what the 
door means ; what is its real significance in life ? 

The door is the way of entrance into any 
building or structure. It signifies, therefore, the 
right of admission to all that the building stands 
for. The open door says " Come in." In the 
home, the door means access to the inner circle 
of love and joy and peace. In the fortress, the 
door means escape from danger, entrance into 
safety and security. In the temple the door 
means the right of approach to the mercy-seat 
of God, the privilege of communion with those 
who worship and serve Him. Thus in all ancient 
religions the doorway was regarded as a sacred 
place. The threshold of the house was the prim- 



THE OPEN DOOR 5 

itive altar, and the threshold-covenant was one 
of the earliest forms of religion. 

But the door is not only the way of entrance. 
It is also the way of egress. It leads in and it 
leads out. It is the symbol of liberty as well as 
the symbol of peace. A door through which you 
can pass only in one direction is not a door : it is 
a trap. The dwellers in a human home use the 
door not only to enter into their place of rest but 
also to go out to their places of work. The door 
of the fortress would not fulfill its purpose if it 
only let the garrison in ; it must also swing free 
to let the soldiers forth to battle and conquest. 
The temple doors invite the worshipers to praise 
God in the sanctuary; but they also remind us 
of the duty and privilege of going out from the 
holy place to serve God in the world. 

Inward and outward — both ways the true door 
invites us. Protection and freedom ; safety and 
struggle ; worship and work ; life enfolded in 
peace, and life enlarged in power — this is the two- 
fold significance of the door. And this is what 
Christ means when He says to us, " I am the 
door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be 
saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." 

How true it is ; and yet how often we forget it, 
how little we understand its full and glorious 



6 THE OPEN DOOR 

meaning ! Christ is the way into peace. By Him 
we have access to the Father, forgiveness for our 
sins, reconciliation with God, dehverance from 
evil, security from death, comfort and rest, and 
the promise of everlasting life — how blessed is 
the entrance into these things through the grace 
of Jesus Christ! It is like coming up from the 
wilderness^ where tempests rage and wild beasts 
are lurking and robbers seekUheir prey, at the 
close of day, when the shades of night are fall- 
ing, and finding the door of the sheepfold open, 
and passing in to security and peace. Nothing 
can surpass the sweet repose of the heart when 
it takes refuge in Christ. 

" Jesus, lover of my soul, 
Let me to Thy bosom fly, 
While the billows near me roll, 
While the tempest still is high." 

That sweet old song is the first message of the 
gospel, the message that meets the deepest need 
of a lost and perishing world. Nothing can ever 
change that message. Nothing can ever take its 
place. 

But this refuge, this restfulness, is not the 
whole of salvation. To be truly saved, thor- 
oughly saved, means something more than com- 



THE OPEN DOOR 7 

ing into security and peace. It means also 
going out to a richer, fuller life, a broader, 
deeper usefulness, a larger joy of noble work. 
Full salvation is active as well as passive. It 
includes deliverance from danger and consecra- 
tion to duty. It ransoms the soul from sin in 
order to set it free for service. The soul that is 
saved, goes in to God and out to life; and every- 
where, inward and outward, it finds through 
Christ what it needs — protection to safeguard it, 
rest to refresh it, pasture to strengthen it, work 
to discipline and unfold it. *' I am come," says 
Christ, "not only that they might not die, but 
that they might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly." 

Christ's two commands are "Come " and " Go " 
— invitation and Hberation. As Phillips Brooks 
interprets it: discipleship, which sits at His feet 
to learn, and apostleship, which goes out into the 
world to work. 

" Come and see," He says to Andrew and 
Philip and Nathaniel, come and see, that you may 
believe in me. And then " Go and tell John what 
things you have seen and heard," that my grace 
may be known through you to all men. 

" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." And then " Go 



8 • THE OPEN DOOR 

work to-day in my vineyard. Go ye therefore, 
and teach all nations." 

Let me speak for a few moments of Christ as 
the living door through whom those who have 
entered into peace with God go out to a larger, 
freer, nobler life. 

I. Through Christ our thoughts go out into 
liberty. 

It is common to speak of the unbelief which 
rejects Christ and His teaching, and of the attempt 
to solve the mystery of life without religion, as 
"free thought." No name could be more false 
and misleading. The thought which refuses 
to go beyond the evidence of the senses ; the 
thought which has no explanation for our deepest 
affections, our most ardent longings, our loftiest 
aspirations, except to say that they are dreams 
and illusions ; the thought which has nothing to 
say about the origin of our spiritual nature and 
no answer to give to our burning questions about 
the eternal future ; the thought which knows no 
more of God 

" than sheep or goats, 
That nourish a bhnd life within the brain," 

is not free thought. It is captive thought, en- 
slaved thought, imprisoned thought. Christ opens 



THE OPEN DOOR 9 

a door in the blank wall with which unbelief 
would shut us in. He tells us that He comes 
from the spiritual world, and that He returns 
thither. He has seen it ; He is sure of its reality ; 
He testifies of that which He has seen and speaks 
of that which He knows. He bids us trust our 
spiritual instincts even more than we trust our 
senses. He assures us that the hunger and thirst 
after righteousness is a prophecy that the soul 
shall be filled, that purity of heart is a pledge 
that we shall see God. He does not give us a 
definition of God. Definitions are limitations. He 
gives us a vision of God. Vision is liberation. 
" Look out through me," He says to us, " and 
you shall see the Father. For the Father is in 
me, and I in Him. He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father." 

What is it that we see in Christ ? Holiness, and 
justice, and truth, and mercy, and kindness, and 
pity, and wisdom, and love. Through that door 
our thoughts go out to seek after God, not 
blindly, but with a Divine guidance. All that is 
holy, all that is true, all that is good, all that is 
spiritually lovely, belongs to God. It is but the 
broken image and reflection of the perfect light 
of His countenance revealed in Jesus Christ. 
Every gleam of glory that flashes upon our 



lo THE OPEN DOOR 

souls as we wander freely through the world of 
thought, like every ray of radiance that we see 
upon the breast of the moving waters beneath 
the stars, is an evidence and interpretation of the 
eternal light, which is God. 

Take, for example, that one word in which 
Christ teaches us all to call God " our Father." 
No dark prison of doubt can confine us, no for- 
bidding walls of austere doctrine can shut us in, 
while we have that door by which our souls may 
go out. Who can question a father's wisdom? 
Who can fathom a father's love? Who can 
exhaust the resources of a father's tenderness and 
care? 

What does fatherhood mean ? I speak out the 
experience of an earthly fatherhood that has 
blessed my whole life. It means tenderness, for- 
bearance, watchfulness, firmness to counsel and 
rebuke, pity for my worst, sympathy for my best, 
a golden friendship, an undying love. If earthly 
fatherhood means all that, how much more does 
heavenly fatherhood mean ! 

We come to Christ with our doubts and ques- 
tions and perplexities. He tells us that the great 
God, the sovereign Ruler of the universe, is our 
Father. Our questions are not all answered, but 
our way is open. Doubts may still shadow our 



THE OPEN DOOR ii 

path, but they cannot stay our steps. They are 
no longer a wall, but a mist, through which we 
press onward toward the light. 

Christ is the door of our faith. There is no 
advance in reHgious knowledge except through 
Him. There is no revision of creeds save that to 
which He leads. Without Him there may be 
change. But the only possible improvement is 
to tune the music of our faith more closely to the 
keynote of His name. Every forward movement 
must be through Christ. 

His word is our chart. His spirit is our guide, 
His person is our star. Our motto is, ''Not a 
new gospel, but more gospel." Advance in 
theology through Christ, means the outgoing of 
the soul into life with God, with new experiences, 
new wonders, new glories unfolding every day. 
Beloved, now we know in part. But we know. 
And the door that opens before us into a wider, 
richer, truer knowledge of God, is Jesus Christ, 
who is the brightness of the Father's glory and 
the express image of His person. 

n. Through Christ our affections and sympa- 
thies go out into liberty. 

The love of Christ is the type of all true and 
noble love because it does not narrow the heart, 
but expands it and makes it overflow with blessed 



12 THE OPEN DOOR 

and generous feelings. Contrast Him with the 
Scribes and Pharisees. Their doctrine was " Love 
thyself well, and give what is left over to those 
who will pay for it." Christ's doctrine is " Love 
thy neighbor as thyself, and give freely because 
thou hast freely received." 

He would have us love Him first and most, 
because He is our Saviour, because He has given 
Himself to us and for us. But He would have us 
love every one else better, because we love Him 
best. 

Nothing in the world can so enlarge the heart 
and set its sympathies free to go out to all men 
as a true knowledge of Christ and a true devotion 
to Him. When we enter through Him into the 
secret of what real love means — when we learn 
from Him that it is not getting but giving, and 
that the heart finds its deepest joy in bestowing 
happiness upon others, then the door is open and 
we may go out and find pasture. 

Think how Christ lived in the world. How 
closely He was in touch with all sorts and condi- 
tions of men. How He understood the little 
children and rejoiced in their confidence. How 
He took part in all human joys and sorrows, from 
the wedding feast to the funeral. How He 
entered into the trials and conflicts, the perplexi- 



THE OPEN DOOR 13 

ties and aspirations, the weariness and the hope, 
of human nature everywhere. Whose thoughts 
did He not read? Whose wishes did He not 
fathom ? Whose real needs did He not minister 
unto? 

He draws each one of us in by sympathy with 
us, in order that our hearts may go out in sym- 
pathy with Him. Through the Hps of that dis- 
ciple whom He loved He says to us, " Love not 
the world " — the sensuous perishing order of 
existence which is separate from God — "neither 
the things that are in the world." But the people 
that are in the world — the suffering, struggling 
souls, enslaved by its evil, deceived by its follies, 
starved by its famine ; all sorts of people that are 
weary and heavy laden ; all sorts of people that are 
climbing upward and lending a hand to others ; 
all sorts of people that need God's love and ours, 
Jesus would have us love, even as He loves us. 

Faith in Christ rewrites the old motto. Not 
" Liberty, equality, fraternity." But first, frater- 
nity, which lifts men into equality and so fits them 
for liberty. Faith in Christ makes us acknowl- 
edge brotherhood with all who are trying to cast 
out devils and heal the sick, whether they follow 
with us or not. Faith in Christ says, " He that is 
not against us is for us." 



14 THE OPEN DOOR 

I have no confidence in that kind of Chris- 
tianity which will not join hands with an honest 
Hebrew to relieve suffering and enlighten igno- 
rance. I have no confidence in that kind of 
Protestantism which refuses to take hold of one 
end of the litter in which a wounded man is 
lying because a Roman Catholic has hold of the 
other end. I have no confidence in that kind of 
Presbyterianism which lives in hostility and hatred 
toward Christians who have other creeds and 
forms of worship. I have no confidence in that 
kind of a church which resembles a private relig- 
ious club, caring only for the comfort and respect- 
ability of its members, unreasonably sure of its 
own salvation and unreasonably indifferent to the 
salvation of the world. 

I believe in that Presbyterianism which is evan- 
gehcal and evangelistic, which loves the old 
gospel so much that it cannot keep it to itself, 
and which has no rivalry with any other church 
except to try who can do the most good in the 
world. I believe in a church which goes out, 
through Christ and with Christ, to seek and to 
save the lost. I beHeve in a Christianity which is 
a giving, forgiving, sympathizing, sacrificing, self- 
forgetting, and happy life of ministry to the souls 
of others. And I believe that the perfection and 



THE OPEN DOOR 15 

everlasting continuance of that life is the joy of 
heaven. 

" Rejoice, we are allied 
To that which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive ; 
A spark disturbs our clod — 
Nearer we held of God 
Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe." 

III. Through Christ our best activities, our 
noblest powers of effort and achievement, go out 
into liberty. 

Let us admit frankly that the Christian life has 
its restrictions, its limitations, its constraints. It 
does cut a man off from some things which 
attract and tempt him. It does interpose a bar- 
rier between the heart and some of its desires. 
It involves sacrifice, resignation, giving up. 
There is a sense in which the acceptance of Christ 
means the withdrawal from the old sphere of life, 
the entrance into a new and hidden sphere^ the 
seclusion and separation of the soul. 

But think for a moment on which side of our 
nature it cuts us off. Is it not the lower side, the 
baser side, the perishing side ? What are the 
things that must be given up ? What are the 
activities from which it withdraws us ? Selfish 
ambition, sensual lust, frivolous dissipation, heart- 



i6 THE OPEN DOOR 

less conflict with our fellow-men, hopeless pursuit 
of empty pleasures, weary service of insatiable 
passions. These are activities, it is true, but they 
are activities of death, not of life. To be cut off 
from them is to be set free from them. It is not 
to enter a narrower life : it is to come in through 
Christ to a deeper, truer, quieter, happier life. 

Tell me one thing, my friend, that you would 
have to resign if you accepted Christ, and I will 
tell you that without that thing you would be 
far purer, stronger, happier, better fitted to live 
than you are to-day. If you give it up, if you 
leave it behind you and enter into salvation 
through Christ the door, you will find that same 
door open before you to activities that are 
unspeakably nobler, pleasures that are infinitely 
more satisfying, and rewards that are immeas- 
urably richer. 

For this is what Christ does for the man who 
comes in through Him. He gives that man a 
new hope, a new inspiration, a new motive and 
power of effort, a new force of love and courage 
in all his faculties, and then sends him out again 
into the world to live and to work with all his 
energies. 

What good thing is there that Christ will not 
let you do if you take Him as your Master? 



THE OPEN DOOR 17 

Nay, what good thing is there that He does not 
want you to do, and to do it better, more ear- 
nestly, more thoroughly, for His sake ? 

I am not speaking vaguely. I am talking to 
men and women whose lives, whose duties, whose 
perils, whose tasks, whose opportunities, here in 
this great city, I know. I say to you that what- 
ever your real life and whatever your right work 
may be, you will live it better, you will do it more 
honestly and more thoroughly, if you go out to 
it through the door which is opened to you by 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

Christ came into the world to sanctify all forms 
of honest human toil and all tasks of vital human 
effort. Christ came into the world not to sepa- 
rate men from life, but to bring true happiness 
into life. Christ came into the world to conse- 
crate humanity to a holy priesthood, serving God 
in the ritual of the common life. The activi- 
ties that mar and weaken and destroy humanity. 
He would check and crush out. The activities 
that develop true manhood and womanhood and 
make the world a better place to live in. He would 
encourage and enlarge. He came to break down 
the false distinction between the sacred and the 
secular. There is no clean and honest work in 
this world which may not be done in Christ's 
2 



i8 THE OPEN DOOR 

name, and done a little better because the work- 
man calls Jesus his Master. 

" Every mason in the quarry, every builder on the shore, 
Every woodsman in the forest, every boatman at the oar, 

" Hewing wood and drawing water, splitting stones and cleaving 
sod, 
All the dusty ranks of labor in the regiment of God, 

" March together toward His triumph, do the task His hands pre- 
pare; 
Honest toil is holy service, faithful work is praise and prayer." 

But more than this — He calls each one of us 
to go out through Him to a new and wonderful 
task. It is the task of transforming the kingdoms 
of this world into the kingdom of our God and of 
His Christ ; the task of drawing the world back 
from darkness and sin and sorrow to the love of 
the heavenly Father. 

This is the great object for which the Church 
exists. She is to bear witness to the truth, but 
it must always be an evangehstic witness, a mis- 
sionary witness. The first article in her commis- 
sion is not to define, not to organize, not to build, 
not to devise liturgies, but to preach the gospel to 
every creature. And this work must begin at 
home, in our own country, in order that it may 
overflow to every country in the world. A free 
church in a free state is the finest result of noble 



THE OPEN DOOR 19 

and enlightened politics. A preaching church in 
a listening land is the best product of rehgious 
freedom. A whole country won for Christ is the 
greatest service that can crown the labors of a 
loyal and believing church. 

The Master calls us, my brethren, to go out, 
through Him, to this glorious task. Every one 
of us, young and old, learned and unlearned, lay- 
men and clergymen, women and children — every 
one of us may have a share in the work. There 
is something for every one to do. 

By the wayside, in a country where I often go 
to rest in the summer, there is a small, cool, 
crystal spring ; and by the spring there is a little 
cup, hanging on the broken branch of a tree ; and 
that silent cup says clearly that the water flows 
for every one who is thirsty and will stoop down 
to drink. By the spring of the water of everlast- 
ing life there is also a cup which tells the same 
story. But it is not for you alone. Not far 
away there is sure to be a little child waiting for 
you to give the cup of cold water in the Master's 
name. 

There is a place in Christ's army for every soul 
that belongs to Him, and a spot on the battlefield 
where each soldier is needed. 

In a certain battle, not long ago, the officer of 



20 THE OPEN DOOR 

a battalion arrived late. Dashing up to his chief, 
he asked where he should lead his troops. " Go 
where you please," was the answer, "there is 
good fighting all along the hne." 

Yes, there is good fighting all along the line 
for Christ! In heathen lands and in our own 
land ; in the university and in the market place ; 
in society and on the frontier ; in the home and in 
the mission school — all along the line thousands 
of places where loyal soldiers can do glorious 
service for Christ and their fellow-men. But you 
must go out to do it. 

You must not shut yourself up in your religion 
as if it were a prison. You must issue forth from 
it as the home in which you have found peace for 
your heart, and strength for your work, and in- 
spiration for your duty. Christ must be your 
door, by whom you go in to God and out to 
man. 

Come in, then, my friend, whose sins are unfor- 
given, whose soul is unsatisfied, whose heart is 
heavy laden — come in, through Jesus, to pardon, 
peace, and rest. 

Go out, then, my friend, whose faith is still 
unproved by works, whose nature is still unde- 
veloped by service, whose life is still narrowed 
and imprisoned by self, go out, through Christ, 



THE OPEN DOOR 21 

to a broader, nobler, happier life than you have 
ever lived before : — 

" The freer step, the fuller breath, 
The wide horizon's grander view, 
The sense of life that knows no death, 
The life that maketh all things new." 



II 

RESURRECTION NOW 



II 

RESURRECTION NOW^ 

" If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are 
above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." — Col. 
iii. I, 

Resurrection is a great word. It has a power 
to stir the mind, a charm to quicken the imagina- 
tion, and an attraction to draw the heart. What 
thoughtful person can repeat that sentence of the 
Creed which says of Christ, " the third day He 
rose again from the dead," and then add that 
triumphant utterance of death-defying faith, " I 
believe in the resurrection of the body," without 
a great thrill of hope and joy? 

But these two thoughts of resurrection do not 
exhaust its meaning. It is more than a sublime 
fact in the past. It is more than a glorious event 
in the future. It is an experience in the present. 
It is happening to-day. At this very moment a 
new and eternal life is unfolding within human 
souls and transforming human bodies in fellow- 
ship with Christ. At this very moment men and 

^ Baccalaureate sermon, University of Missouri, June i, 1902. 

25 



26 THE OPEN DOOR 

women are passing from death unto life, from 
darkness to light, from the perishing to the 
imperishable, by vital union with the spirit of 
Jesus. 

Here, then, is the great thought which the 
text flashes into our souls. There is a Resur- 
rection Now. There is a triumph over death for 
which we do not need to wait until the graves are 
opened. We may have it at once. There is a 
victory of life for which we do not need to look 
to some far-distant morning. We may feel it 
to-day. St. Paul felt it as he sat in his Roman 
prison, writing to his friends at Colossae. Worn, 
and feeble, and aged before his time, bound with 
chains, waiting for his trial before a cruel and 
bloody Caesar, St. Paul knew even then that he 
was a risen man. By faith in the things that are 
unseen and eternal he had already won the vic- 
tory over the world. In prison he was free, in 
weakness he was strong, in chains he was cheer- 
ful, in exile he was exultant, in trouble he tri- 
umphed, and in the drear winter of old age his 
spirit was quickened with an immortal spring. 
Surely this is a veritable resurrection, and they 
who have entered into such an experience are 
risen indeed. 

But this risen life is under a law. Like all 



RESURRECTION NOW 27 

other forms of life it has a condition which must 
be fulfilled in order that the life may continue to 
exist and expand. It is of this law of the risen 
life, it is of this condition under which alone 
Resurrection Now can become a real and abiding 
experience within us, that I wish to speak to you. 
The subject is important. If we can learn 
even now the secret of rising from the dead, 
there is no other knowledge worthy to be com- 
pared with this. And surely the subject is appro- 
priate. It is the season when nature has put on 
a new life. All round us the visible emblems 
of vitality are unfolding. The old earth, after her 
long sleep in winter's lap, stirs at the touch of 
summer, stretches her arms, smiles like a child 
waking at sunrise, and laughs with a thou- 
sand melodies of joy. How beautiful it all is. 
How deeply it speaks to our longing hearts. It is 
the time of unfolding life in your experience also. 
You are in the flood-tide of summer, my friends, 
and the time for the singing of birds has come. 
Youth means liberation, enlargement, unfolding. 
To some of you this Commencement season 
brings a new period of existence, as you step 
across the threshold of the university into the 
larger school of the world. To all of you I trust 
it brings new thoughts, new hopes, new purposes, 



28 THE OPEN DOOR 

new ideas of what it means to live. It is a privi- 
lege to speak to you, and I should be glad indeed 
if I could make that privilege a power. A power 
it would be if your hearts would but receive this 
day, and keep for ever, the Law of Resurrection 
Now. 

" If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those 
things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the 
right hand of Gody 

What does it mean to seek those things that 
are above? Where is it that Christ sitteth on 
the right hand of God ? Surely not in some 
distant region, invisible and inaccessible to 
mortals. To read the law of the risen life 
thus would be to rob it of its meaning and its 
power for the present moment. God is not 
secluded in some far-off heaven. He is dwelling 
and working in this very world where we live. 
His " right hand " is manifest in all His works 
of wisdom and righteousness and goodness and 
love. Christ sitteth on the right hand of His 
Father because He is exalted to share in all these 
glorious works, because He is the Mediator 
between the divine and the human, because His 
spirit brings men into harmony with God and 
inspires the pure and holy thoughts, the just and 
noble deeds, the generous and blessed affections 



RESURRECTION NOW 29 

that lift the world. He is not far away from us. 
He is with us always, even unto the end of the 
world. He sitteth close beside us, breaketh bread 
at our tables, walketh with us in the city streets 
and among the green fields and beside the sea. '/ 
The " things that are above " are the things that 
belong to Him and to His kingdom, the spiritual 
realities of a noble life, whatsoever things are 
pure and lovely and of good report. These are 
the things that we are to seek. We are to dis- 
tinguish between the perishing and the imperish- 
able. We are to choose in every action between ' 
the higher and the lower end. We are to cling 
to that which is fine and generous and true, and 
cut loose from that which is coarse and selfish 
and false. We are to turn away from that which 
drags us downward and makes us Hke the beasts, 
and follow after that which draws us upward 
toward the hkeness of Christ. That is the law 
of Resurrection Now. Those who have risen / 
must be ever rising. The resurrection life must v 
be an upward life. 

Let us try to carry this law into some of the 
different spheres of our existence. Let us try to 
see how the things that are above mingle with 
the things that are beneath all through the world, 
and how our present life, by lofty choice, and by 



30 THE OPEN DOOR 

fellowship with Jesus, may be made a daily resur- 
rection and ascension. 

I. Look first at the aspects of the natural world 
in which we live. Are there not two sides here — 
a lower side and a higher — one which ministers 
to sense alone and another which ministers to 
spirit ? The procession of the seasons, the secret 
forces of chemistry and physics and biology, are 
working together for the supply of our bodily 
needs. They warm and feed and clothe us. But 
if we look only at this side of nature, if we regard 
this wonderful world only as our dormitory, our 
wardrobe, our feeding-trough, we are receiving 
from it only the least and lowest of its gifts. It 
has a nobler service to render to our souls, a 
revelation of wisdom and beauty, a message of 
joy and peace, a gift of spiritual instruction and 
comfort. Wordsworth was right when he said : — 

" One impulse from a vernal wood 
May teach you more of man, 
Of moral evil, and of good, 
Than all the sages can." 

When we look only at the sensuous side we may 
read nature as a grocer's account book, but when 
we look at the spiritual side we begin to interpret 
nature as a divine poem. There are some people 



RESURRECTION NOW 31 

in the world, and very decent people too, to 
whom the returning summer cannot mean much 
more than it means to a comfortable cow — a time 
of physical pleasure, when there are no more 
blizzards, and it is easy to move about, and there 
are plenty of green things to eat. But there are 
others to whom it means a blossoming of thankful 
thoughts, a rapture of gentle affections, a promise 
of new and immortal life. I once heard an 
Englishman, looking down upon the glittering, 
motionless billows of the Mer de Glace, remark 
that " all that ice would bring a lot of money in 
the hot season at Calcutta — don't you know?" 
The poet Coleridge, in his " Hymn at Sunrise in 
the Vale of Chamouni," hears those silent cata- 
racts of frozen splendor singing the eternal praise 
of God. It is always open to us to choose, my 
friends, whether we will fix our regards upon the 
lower or upon the higher side of nature. We 
have two pairs of eyes, one of the sense and one 
of the soul. The spiritual vision seeks the things 
that are above. To look up is to aspire. To 
aspire is to rise. 

" The beauty to perceive of earthly things, 
The mounting soul must heavenward prune her wings." 

II. In the sphere of human intercourse we find 



32 THE OPEN DOOR 

the same division between the higher and the 
lower. There are two paths in love and friend- 
ship. One leads downward, with pride and folly, 
selfishness and lust as guides, toward the earthly, 
the sensual, and at last the devihsh. The other 
leads upward, with purity and honor, generosity 
and self-sacrifice as guides, toward the celestial, 
the ideal, the God-Hke. Love is a fire; some- 
times it kindles a harbor light to guide the heart 
to peace ; sometimes it kindles a false beacon to 
lure the heart to wreck. There is a friendship 
which saves, and there is a friendship which ruins. 

What are you seeking in human intercourse? 
That is the crucial question. It is said that a 
man may be known by the company he keeps. 
Not always. He may be better known by the 
l/^ purpose with which he keeps it. The Pharisees 
kept company with respectable folk, and found 
dead men's bones. Christ kept company with 
publicans and sinners, and found hidden treasure. 

If you are seeking in your fellow-men that 
which ministers to ambition or avarice or sensu- 
ality, if you are trying to make friends simply in 
order that they may help you to secure certain 
advantages in the world of wealth or fashion, if you 
are forming ties of intimacy whose chief attrac- 
tion lies in their appeal to that which is selfish 



RESURRECTION NOW 33 

and greedy and base in your nature, then you are 
surely on the descending path. But if you are 
lookine for that which is best in the men and 
women with whom you come into contact ; if you 
are seeking also to give them that which is best 
in yourself; if you are looking for a friendship 
which shall help you to know yourself as you are 
and to fulfill yourself as you ought to be ; if you 
are looking for a love which shall not be a flatter- 
ing dream and a madness of desire, but a true 
comradeship and a mutual inspiration to all 
nobility of living, then you are surely on the 
ascending path. 

Men tell you that you must " know the world." 
Yes, it is true, unless you are to be helpless 
babies all your lives, you must acquire some of 
this knowledge. But never suppose that it con- 
sists only or chiefly of a knowledge of evil. The 
world is not a pesthouse, nor is life a complica- 
tion of diseases. The true physiology is a science 
of health. The deepest knowledge of human 
nature has for its guiding light the desire to dis- 
cover that which is best in humanity. Study 
vices less and virtues more. Make your contri- 
bution to society as a believer in pure woman- 
hood and worthy manhood, as an encourager of 
faith and hope and charity, as a leader and helper 



34 THE OPEN DOOR 

in the upward path, as a friend of true friendship, 
and a lover of noble love. Do not waste your 
life in analyzing the pollutions of the social atmos- 
phere, but bring into it the breath of a purer spirit. 

" Be a breeze from the mountain height ; 
Be a fountain of pure delight ; 

Be a star serene, 

Shining clear and keen 
Through the darkness and dread of the night ; 
Be something holy and helpful and bright, — 
Be the best that you can with all your might." 

III. When we turn to the region of art and 
literature do we not find two paths here also ? 
There is noble music which cleanses the heart 
like a tide from the sea, sweeping away all things 
that are low and base, filling it with high thoughts 
and generous desires. There is mean music that 
plays upon the strings of sensual passion and 
vulgar mirth, strumming and tinkling a fit accom- 
paniment to the reckless dance of ephemeral 
souls above the cataract of fatal folly, or beating 
a brutal march for the parade of pride and cruelty 
toward the pit of death. There are pictures that 
immortalize the great moments of history, the 
fine aspirations of humanity, the fair scenes of 
nature. There are pictures that lavish all the 
resources of the most consummate art to perpetu- 



RESURRECTION NOW 35 

ate the trivial and the vile. There are dramas 
that speak of heroism and virtue, and purify our 
hearts with pity, fear, and love. There are plays 
that present life as a coarse and tedious farce, or 
glorify indecency and unfaithfulness, or make a 
bitter jest of the impotence of all goodness and 
the tragic failure of all high aims. There are 
books which store the memory with beautiful 
images and gentle pleasures and fine ideals. There 
are books which leave a bad taste in the mind, 
and weaken every fiber of spiritual courage, and 
poison the springs of imagination at the fountain- 
head. It is for us to choose in which of these 
two paths of art we will walk. It is for us to 
choose whether we will have for our companions 
the poets like Shakespeare and Milton, Words- 
worth and Tennyson, who reveal human nature 
in the light of duty and courage and hope, or the 
writers like Byron and Swinburne, Baudelaire and 
de Musset, who flatter sensual passion and 
darken spiritual faith. The choice determines 
our destiny. Our intellectual nature is like the 
chameleon ; it takes color from that on which it 
feeds. Tell me what music you love, what 
dramas are your favorites, what books you read 
when you are alone, and I will tell you which way 
you are moving, upward or downward. 



36 THE OPEN DOOR 

IV. Look now for a moment at the great com- 
mon sphere of human labor, and see how the two 
sides of hfe are contrasted here. In one aspect, 
all the varied toil of mankind is only the mass 
of separate efforts by which each individual earns 
daily bread and amasses wealth, little or much. 
He who thinks of it merely in this aspect, drops 
into it as a mechanical routine, plods along in it 
like a horse in a treadmill, now resolutely, now 
wearily. The only possible result of all his toil is 
what he can get out of it for himself And that 
is limited by his capacity for eating and drinking 
and putting on of raiment. The sting of actual 
hunger and thirst and discomfort is a stimulus up 
to a certain point. But once beyond that point, 
there is nothing to animate endeavor except cer- 
tain preferences for rich and unwholesome food 
instead of plain and wholesome food, and for 
costly and inconvenient clothing instead of simple 
and convenient clothing, and perhaps a strange 
desire to heap up money merely for the sake of 
possession. The human being who looks on labor 
from that side is certainly seeking the things that 
are beneath. 

But there is another way of regarding the toil 
of life. It is a divine task laid upon mankind by 
the Creator for the conquest and cultivation of 



RESURRECTION NOW 37 

the natural world. Human labor is a vast con- 
federation against want and barbarism on behalf 
of civilization — a cooperation for the emancipation 
of mankind from the crushing pressure of physi- 
cal necessities in order that the intellectual and 
spiritual powers of man may be unfolded. Toil 
itself, performed in this spirit, is a discipline for 
the soul, a medicine for sloth and vice, a teacher 
of self-restraint, patience, and courage. When we 
begin to perceive these things we see a new mean- 
ing in our work, whatever it may be. We can 
put heart into it, and be proud and glad of doing 
it well. We can lift it above its conditions by 
seeking the things that are above it. We can 
make it a vocation; a mission; a secret, divine 
enterprise. 

V. Yes, my friends, this division between the 
things that are above and the things that are 
beneath runs through our whole life. Even relig- 
ion has a higher side and a lower side, and upon 
our choice between these two sides depends the 
influence which religion is to have upon our 
destiny. There is a type of religion which con- 
sists chiefly of abstract doctrines embodied in a 
system, and another which consists chiefly of 
outward ceremonies arranged in a ritual. In one 
case all the stress is laid upon the correct state- 



38 THE OPEN DOOR 

ment of these doctrines ; in the other case the 
emphasis falls upon the punctual performance of 
these ceremonies. When the system is subscribed, 
when the ritual is observed, all is done that is 
necessary for salvation. 

Far be it from me to say that creeds are useless. 
They are as essential to theology as grammars 
are to literature. Nor do I dream that there can 
ever be a church without some forms of worship. 
They are as needful as tactics are to an army. 
But when we mistake these things for the reality 
of religion, when we rest in them and repose 
upon them as sufficient to insure our personal 
salvation, then we forget to seek the things that 
are above. Inevitably such a religion must 
become a sensuous, selfish, sinking religion. 

Far above it shines that blessed state of daily 
dependence upon God and intercourse with Him, 
of real fellowship with Christ and likeness to Him, 
of constant service and sacrifice for our fellow-men, 
in which alone pure and undefiled religion is 
found. That is what we are to seek just because 
it is above us. We are not to be satisfied with 
our poor little orthodoxies or our vain little here- 
sies. We are not to make puppets of ourselves 
in our tiny rituals, and content our souls with the 
smell of incense or the singing of psalms. We 



RESURRECTION NOW 39 

are not to settle down comfortably in the convic- 
tion that we are to be saved and raised from the 
dead at the last day. We are to look and long 
and struggle upward, we are to rise with Christ 
now toward the things that are above. 

Will you take a motto for your spiritual life ? 
It is not an inscription for your tombstone : 
" Resurgam, I shall arise, when earthly life is 
over, when the graves unclose." It is a watch- 
word for your hearts : " Resurgo, I arise, I am 
delivered, I am quickened, I begin to live upward, 
through Christ, for Christ, unto Christ." 



Ill 

A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 



Ill 

A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 
"God, that cannot lie." — TiTUS i. 2. 

This verse touches a point in which God differs 
from man. For it is a well-known fact that men 
can lie, and that very frequently they do. They 
have a natural faculty for it, which needs only to 
be exercised to develop into an acquired facility. 
The great poet has described the case very sug- 
gestively in the passage where he makes Hamlet 
say that playing on the recorder is " as easy as 
lying." Successful falsehood, like skillful play- 
ing, is an art which must be learned by practice. 
But merely to say the thing that is not, is no more 
difficult than blowing into a flute. Any man that 
has breath can tell a plain lie. 

Now the text declares that what is possible 
with man is impossible with God. He cannot lie. 
And you remember, at once, a number of other 
places in the Bible where the same doctrine is 
taught. You will recall that striking confession 
which was wrung from the unwilling lips of 

43 



44 THE OPEN DOOR 

Balaam when he was called to curse and com- 
pelled to bless : ^' God is not a man, that He 
should he ; neither the son of man, that He should 
repent." You will hear again the majestic voice 
of Samuel, affirming that "The Strength of Israel 
will not lie." Your memory will bring up before 
you those massive and solid words, like pillars of 
granite, in which the writer of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews shows that the Christian's hope cannot 
be shaken because it rests on the divine promise 
and oath, " two immutable things, in which it is 
impossible for God to lie." And as you recollect 
these marked and remarkable declarations of the 
veracity of God, you will recognize also that the 
truth is one which is spread underneath the 
whole Bible. It resembles a primitive stratum 
of rock in the earth's crust, which is lifted into 
sight, here and there, in the rugged summits of 
the mountains, but which exists even where it 
does not appear, and is the foundation of all the 
other strata piled above it, and of the deposits 
which floods and glaciers have left upon them, 
and of the dwellings and temples which men 
have built upon the surface. The bed rock is the 
basis of all. 

The bed rock of the Bible is the truthfulness 
of God. The revelation of His character, His 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 45 

law, His will, which is made here rests ultimately 
upon the fact of His veracity. When the law- 
giver says, " This do, and thy soul shall live," 
when the prophet says, " Thus saith the Lord, 
and thus shall it come to pass," when the evan- 
gelist says, ** Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and thou shalt be saved," the one thing that is 
taken for granted, the one thought that lies back 
of the law, the prophecy, the gospel, is that God 
cannot lie. 

Now I want you to think for a while of this 
divine impossibility. 

I. In the first place, let us try to get it very 
clearly and solidly into our minds that there 
is a divine impossibility. There are some things 
that God cannot do. We fall very often into a 
false and foolish way of reasoning about the 
divine attributes, which comes, I think, from the 
habit of treating moral truths as if they were 
mathematical, and trusting a finite logic to deal 
with infinite quantities. We argue that because 
God is infinite and absolute there must be nothing 
that He does not know and nothing that He can- 
not do. From the mere statement of a proposi- 
tion, therefore, it would follow that God knows it, 
and from the mere conception of an action it 
would follow that He can do it. But the same 



46 THE OPEN DOOR 

logic would lead us inevitably to the conclusion 
that there is nothing that God is not. If He is 
absolutely without bounds or limits of any kind, 
then He is light and darkness, He is good and 
evil, He is the sinner and the saint. Then we 
must believe the mystical words of Emerson in 
that strange little piece called Brahma: — 

" If the red slayer think he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 
They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep, and pass, and turn again. 

" They reckon ill who leave me out ; 
When me they fly, I am the wings, 
1 am the doubter and the doubt. 

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings." 

But remember that if God is infinite in this 
sense, then He must be unknown and unknow- 
able. He cannot have character, for character 
implies distinction. He cannot even have exist- 
ence in any real sense, for existence is bounded 
by non-existence. Now the Bible reveals that 
God is, and that He is a real and personal being, 
and that He has a moral character, fixed and 
immutable and supreme. If it seems to us diffi- 
cult or impossible to make that revelation square 
with our metaphysics, I for one am always ready 
to break with metaphysics, if need be, and stand 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 47 

by the Bible, and trust God as He makes Him- 
self known to my moral nature in these Scrip- 
tures and, above all, in the person and life of 
Jesus Christ. And here the character is the first 
thing, the great thing, the dominant thing. We 
say that God is infinite, but before we say that, 
we say that He is holy and just and good and 
true ; and the infinitude is to be interpreted in 
only in so far as it is consistent with these at- 
tributes. All things are possible with God that 
really belong to God. It is not possible that He 
should act inconsistently with His character any 
more than it is possible that darkness should give 
light. His omnipotence is subject to Himself, 
and what He is reigns over what He does. " He 
is called omnipotent," says St. Augustine, " in 
doing what He wills, not in suffering what He 
does not will. For if that happened to Him He 
would not be omnipotent. Wherefore He cannot 
do certain things because He is omnipotent." 

Because the truth of God is perfect and 
supreme in all His ways therefore He cannot 
lie. 

n. Now consider for a moment what this 
divine impossibility means. 

The false is opposed to the true, and that oppo- 
sition is always one and the same. But we see it 



48 THE OPEN DOOR 

in different lights and may express it in different 
terms. The false is fictitious or imaginary, the 
true is real and actual ; and the difference between 
them is the difference between an illusion and a 
fact. The false is partial and incomplete, the true 
is perfect and exact, it corresponds to its idea; 
the false circle is not a circle, but an oval ; the 
true circle has every point of its circumference 
equidistant from the center ; and the difference 
between them is the difference between an ap- 
proximation and a fulfillment. The false is decep- 
tive, it appears to be what it is not ; the true is 
genuine, it shows itself for what it is ; a false 
friend is an enemy in disguise, a true friend is one 
who feels the love that he professes ; and the dif- 
ference between them is the difference between 
hypocrisy and honesty. The false is that which 
changes, and fails, and disappoints us, the true is 
that which is firm, steadfast, and trustworthy ; a 
false promise is made to be broken, a true promise 
is made to be kept; and the difference between 
them is the difference between unfaithfulness and 
fidelity. Now when we say that God cannot lie 
because He is true, we mean all this and more. 
We mean that He is real, not a dream, nor a name, 
but the living God. We mean that He is perfect, 
that everything which belongs to the divine ideal 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 49 

actually exists in Him, so that He alone is the true 
God, of whom the false divinities are but broken 
and distorted shadows. We mean that He is sin- 
cere, that He is what He appears to be, so that in 
Him the fact corresponds to the revelation, and 
the thought to the deed, and the feeling to the 
action, and the whole character to its expression. 
We mean that He is faithful, that what He fore- 
tells He will surely bring to pass, that what He 
promises He will certainly perform. 

All these elements, it seems to me, enter into 
the Christian doctrine of the truthfulness of God. 
And if they seem to you familiar and so neces- 
sary that it is almost superfluous to mention 
them, let me remind you that this is chiefly be- 
cause Christianity has impressed them so deeply 
upon our moral consciousness. They do not exist 
in all religions ; they do not even exist in all phil- 
osophies. When I spoke, at the beginning, of 
lying as a common and natural faculty of man, it 
was by no means a jocose or trivial remark. 
Humanity in its lower forms, unenlightened by 
the Divine Spirit, does not necessarily recognize 
the beauty and glory of truth. Among barbarous 
races lying is not only a general habit, it is fre- 
quently regarded as a virtue ; and even among 
civilized and cultivated races you will find people 
4 



50 THE OPEN DOOR 

who can see no disgrace in it except that of being 
found out. Many religions have been invented 
and believed — or at least men have believed that 
they believed them — in which falsehood plays a 
prominent part in the characters and actions of 
the gods. Remember, for instance, the masquer- 
ades of the gods in Greek and Roman mythology, 
and especially the fabled performances of Hermes, 
who may be called the tutelary divinity of liars. 
The Bible, on the contrary, represents the first 
sin as coming out of a belief that God would not 
really keep His word. " Ye shall not surely die," 
said the evil spirit, and Adam believed him. And 
as the first sin came out of the assumption that 
God might lie, so the second consisted in the fact 
that man did lie. " The woman tempted me and 
I did eat." That was the first falsehood of the 
great harvest that was afterward to spring from 
the idea that God could possibly be untrue. 

" It seems to me," says Carlyle, " you lay your 
finger on the heart of all the world's maladies 
when you call it a skeptical world ; an insincere 
world ; a godless untruth of a world ! It is out 
of all this, as I consider, that the whole tribe of 
social pestilences, French Revolution, Chartism, 
and what not, have derived their being, and their 
chief necessity to be. This must alter. Till this 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 51 

alter nothing can beneficially alter. My one hope 
of the world, my inexpugnable consolation in 
looking at the miseries of the world is that this is 
altering. Here and there one does now find a 
man who knows, as of old, that this world is a 
truth and no plausibility and falsity ; that he him- 
self is alive, not dead or paralytic ; and that the 
world is alive, instinct with Godhead, beautiful 
and awful, even as in the beginning of days." 

How, then, should we welcome and reverence 
a religion which puts truth at the very center of 
the universe and makes it of the essence of Deity ! 
"An honest man's the noblest work of God," 
says the poet. I have long wanted to say, rather, 
"An honest God's the noblest faith of man." 
It is the only foundation for secure thinking, 
to believe that the universe comes from such a 
Being that it must contain realities correspond- 
ing to appearances, and objects answering to our 
perceptions. Unless that were true, life itself 
would be a dream. It is the only foundation for 
right conduct, to believe that the moral law comes 
from a Being who really loves the good and hates 
the evil, and will certainly punish the one and 
reward the other, as He has said. It is the only 
foundation for genuine faith and sincere worship, to 
believe that we have a revelation from the true God. 



52 THE OPEN DOOR 

III. Let us ask, then, whether the Holy Scrip- 
tures, in which Christianity is revealed to us, 
have the marks of coming from such a God of 
truth. I do not mean, now, that we are to dis- 
cuss the large question of the truth of Chris- 
tianity, for that, of course, would take a lifetime, 
and, after all, we must admit frankly that the final 
and entire truth of all that the Christian religion 
teaches can only be demonstrated beyond the 
possibility of doubt to each soul by a practical 
experience which will carry us into the presence 
of God. But what I mean now is that honesty, 
veracity, sincerity, as we find them existing in the 
world around us, have certain general character- 
istics by which we recognize them, and we may 
expect to find these same traits in a revelation 
which comes from a truthful God. 

What are they ? Well, frankness is one, and 
spontaneousness is another, and substantial con- 
sistency is another, and proved trustworthiness is 
another. Consider how it is in your ordinary life. 
When you find that a man is in the habit of keep- 
ing his word you are inclined to believe that he 
will be true to his promises which are not yet 
fulfilled. If he professes certain principles and 
acts upon them, you think that they are really 
his. If he gives you an account of certain things 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 53 

which is manifestly natural and unstudied you 
are inclined to receive it with more confidence 
than if it had an artificial air. If he speaks freely 
and candidly, without mental reserve and secret 
evasion, you are favorably disposed toward him 
and take him for a man of truth. 

Now it seems to me that all these traits are 
clearly marked in the Scriptures, which profess 
to bring us the revelation of the character and 
will of the living God. There is not time to dwell 
on them or illustrate them fully, but they are all 
there. 

The candor of the Bible is manifest and amaz- 
ing. It is the frankest book in the world. I 
think you will look in vain for any other sacred 
writings which narrate with such absolute sin- 
cerity the errors and faults of the people who 
claimed to be the original possessors and the 
principal adherents of the true religion. Nor will 
you find any other book in which the conditions 
of salvation, the requirements of divine service, 
and the consequences of sin are so fully and 
frankly stated. 

And then, it seems to me a thing to inspire 
confidence that the different writers who give us 
their records of the divine revelation speak so nat- 
urally, each in his own style and manner, with no 



54 THE OPEN DOOR 

effort to imitate their predecessors. If four wit- 
nesses should appear before a judge to give an 
account of a certain event or a series of events, 
and each one should tell exactly the same story 
in the same words, the judge would probably con- 
clude, not that their testimony was exceptionally 
valuable, but that the only event which was cer- 
tain beyond a doubt was that they had agreed to 
tell the same story. But if each man told what 
he had seen, as he had seen it, then the evidence 
would be credible. And when we read the four 
gospels, is not that exactly what we find ? Four 
men telling the same story, each in his own way, 
and behind these four men we know not how 
many of those who had seen the Lord and com- 
panied with Him and remembered what He had 
said and done. Some saw what others did not 
see, and some heard what others did not hear. 
Their differences of narrative are proofs of their 
sincerity. False witnesses would have agreed 
beforehand. The discrepancies of the Scriptures 
are difficulties in one sense, but in another and a 
higher sense they are supports. 

Now, of course, this would not be true unless 
there was a real and substantial and manifest con- 
sistency of the Bible with itself. But that is just 
what we find in it. All the difficulties of inter- 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 55 

pretation, all the points of apparent disagreement 
between different writers of which we hear so 
much nowadays, taken altogether and piled up in 
a heap would be no larger than an ant-hill, while 
the great bulk of truth, self-consistent and self- 
coherent, would loom up above it like the Andes. 
The revelation of God in the Bible is one from 
beginning to end. It does not change, it unfolds. 
It does not swerve, it advances. And Jesus 
Christ is He in whom the law and the prophets 
are fulfilled, and from whom the Gospels, the Acts 
of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Revelation 
do proceed. 

And then, while the Bible contains a great 
many things which cannot be verified now, as, for 
example, all its doctrines in regard to the future 
state, it contains also things which can be verified. 
Prophecies fulfilled — you remember the great man 
who was asked to name the strongest evidence of 
the truth of Christianity, and who answered in 
two words, " The Jews !" — records confirmed by 
external and independent testimony from ancient 
monuments and the scrolls of forgotten histories 
— there are many ways in which our confidence 
in the veracity of the Scriptures is strengthened 
and supported. But I think the best way of all is 
by putting its moral and religious precepts to the 



56 THE OPEN DOOR 

proof in this present life and seeing whether the 
results which are foretold do not begin to follow 
our actions here and now. Let a man take that 
word of Paul, " He that soweth to his flesh shall 
of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to 
the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting," 
and try it by this test. No law of the harvest 
could be more certain and unvariable. A sensual 
life brings decay, rottenness to the bones and 
deadness to the soul. A spiritual life brings 
strength and beauty and fragrance as of the 
springtide, into the soul, so that even though the 
outward man perish, the inward man is renewed 
day by day. Let a man take that word of Christ, 
" Come unto me . . . and I will give you rest," 
and prove it now. Let him come and confide 
in Jesus, and lean upon Him as the Saviour, and 
take the easy yoke of His service, and learn 
of His meek and lowly heart, and see whether 
peace will not descend upon his conflicts, and 
refreshment upon his weariness, and sweet rest 
upon his soul. It is thus that we may best learn 
the reality and truth of this religion, and if we find 
that it is true in regard to these inmost secrets and 
mysteries of our spiritual life, we shall be con- 
vinced that it comes from the God of truth who 
cannot lie. 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 57 

IV. And now, if we think thus of the divine 
revelation which comes to us in the Bible — and I 
suppose most of us do think thus — what are the 
things in regard to which it is most important to 
remember that God cannot lie ? 

First of all, we ought to remember that His 
warnings against sin are true. They are not mere 
threats made for the purpose of terrifying man. 
They are sincere and honest statements of what 
will come, and must come, upon those who die 
in their sins, impenitent and unforgiven. It is 
strange, and yet there surely is a reason in it, 
that the most solemn and awful of these declara- 
tions came from the lips of Him who was love 
incarnate. Not in wrath, not with loud and 
angry words, swept by passion beyond the bounds 
of truth, but with a divine gentleness and with 
that serious calm which is the very air of sin- 
cerity, Jesus foretells the future of those who do 
not obtain the mercy of God and show mercy to 
their fellow-men. And I beg you to hear what 
He says — I beg you to read again, in the secret 
of your own chambers, His parables of judgment, 
and remember if anything in the world is true, 
these words are true and will surely be fulfilled, 
because God cannot lie. 

But there is another thing more important still 



58 THE OPEN DOOR 

for us to remember, and that is that all God's 
promises of life and salvation through Jesus 
Christ are true. " Whosoever believeth in Him 
shall not perish, but have everlasting life." " Him 
that Cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." 
" Whosoever will, let him come." 

God offers forgiveness and grace and a celes- 
tial hope to all mankind through His Son Jesus 
Christ, the Saviour of the world. He declares 
that He is not willing that any should perish, 
but that all should come to repentance. He has 
provided a sacrifice for the sins of the whole 
world, and He stands with outstretched arms, 
saying, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden." Now I tell you, as a servant 
of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, that offer is 
sincere and genuine and honest, as men count 
honesty and sincerity and truth. There is no 
reserve in it. There is no secret barrier erected 
by God's decree to keep you from accepting it. 
Let no man persuade you that God says one 
thing and means another. Let God be true, 
though every man be a liar, and every human 
system be false and illogical. If God says that 
He is willing to save unto the uttermost, it is true; 
if He offers to save you, He will do it, and if you 
need grace to accept the offer He will give it to 



A DIVINE IMPOSSIBILITY 59 

you if you ask Him. If He promises to give 
pardon and life to every one that believeth, He 
will do it for you if you take Him at His word. 

From the shadows that veil the cross on Cal- 
vary, from the ineffable light that surrounds the 
throne of God and of the Lamb, I hear a voice 
that cries, "Come; and the Spirit and the bride 
say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. 
And let him that is athirst come. And whoso- 
ever will, let him take the water of life freely." 
And I believe that is the voice of God that can- 
not lie. 



IV 
SALT 



IV 

SALTi 
"Ye are the salt of the earth." — St. Matt. v. 13. 

This figure of speech is plain and pungent. Salt 
is savory, purifying, preservative. It is one of 
those superfluities which the great French wit 
defined as " things that are very necessary." From 
the very beginning of human history men have 
set a high value upon it and sought for it in caves 
and by the seashore. The nation that had a good 
supply of it was counted rich. A bag of salt, 
among the barbarous tribes, was worth more than 
a man. The Jews prized it especially because 
they lived in a warm climate where food was dif- 
ficult to keep, and because their religion laid par- 
ticular emphasis on cleanliness, and because salt 
was largely used in their sacrifices. 

Christ chose an image which was familiar when 
He said to His disciples, " Ye are the salt of the 
earth." This was His conception of their mission, 
their influence. They were to cleanse and sweeten 

1 Baccalaureate sermon, Harvard University, June, 1898. 

63 



64 THE OPEN DOOR 

the world in which they Hved, to keep it from 
decay, to give a new and more wholesome flavor 
to human existence. Their character was not to 
be passive, but active. The sphere of its action 
was to be this present life. There is no use in 
saving salt for heaven. It will not be needed 
there. Its mission is to permeate, season, and 
purify things on earth. 

Now, from one point of view, it was an immense 
compliment for the disciples to be spoken to in 
this way. Their Master showed great confidence 
in them. He set a high value upon them. The 
historian Livy could find nothing better to express 
his admiration for the people of ancient Greece 
than this very phrase. He called them sal gentium ^ 
" the salt of the nations." 

But it was not from this point of view that 
Christ was speaking. He was not paying com- 
pliments. He was giving a clear and powerful 
call to duty. His thought was not that His dis- 
ciples should congratulate themselves on being 
better than other men. He wished them to ask 
themselves whether they actually had in them 
the purpose and the power to make other men 
better. Did they intend to exercise a purifying, 
seasoning, saving influence in the world ? Were 
they going to make their presence felt on earth 



SALT 65 

and felt for good ? If not, they would be failures 
and frauds. The savor would be out of them. 
They would be like lumps of rock salt which has 
lain too long in a damp storehouse; good for 
nothing but to be thrown away and trodden 
under foot; worth less than common rock or 
common clay, because it would not even make 
good roads. 

Men of privilege without power are waste 
material. Men of enlightenment without influ- 
ence are the poorest kind of rubbish. Men of 
intellectual and moral and religious culture, who 
are not active forces for good in society, are not 
worth what it costs to produce and keep them. 
If they pass for Christians they are guilty of 
obtaining respect under false pretenses. They 
were meant to be the salt of the earth. And the 
first duty of salt is to be salty. 

This is the subject on which I want to speak to 
you to-day. The saltiness of salt is the symbol 
of a noble, powerful, truly religious life. 

You college students are men of privilege. It 
costs ten times as much, in labor and care and 
money, to bring you out where you are to-day as 
it costs to educate the average man, and a hun- 
dred times as much as it costs to raise a boy 
without any education. This fact brings you face 
5 



66 THE OPEN DOOR 

to face with a question : Are you going to be 
worth your salt? 

You have had mental training and plenty of 
instruction in various branches of learning. You 
ought to be full of intelligence. You have had 
moral discipline, and the influences of good ex- 
ample have been steadily brought to bear upon 
you. You ought to be full of principle. You 
have had religious advantages and abundant in- 
ducements to choose the better part. You ought 
to be full of faith. What are you going to do 
with your intelligence, }'Our principle, your faith ? 
It is your duty to make active use of them for 
the seasoning, the cleansing, the saving of the 
world. Do not be sponges. Be the salt of the 
earth. 

I. Think, first, of the influence for good which 
men of intelligence may exercise in the world if 
they will only put their culture to the right use. 
Half the troubles of mankind come from igno- 
rance — ignorance which is systematically organ- 
ized with societies for its support and newspapers 
for its dissemination — ignorance which consists 
less in not knowing things than in willfully ignor- 
ing the things that are already known.' There 
are certain physical diseases which would go out 
of existence in ten years if people would only 



SALT d-j 

remember what has been learned. There are 
certain political and social plagues which are 
propagated only in the atmosphere of shallow 
self-confidence and vulgar thoughtlessness. There 
is a yellow fever of literature specially adapted 
and prepared for the spread of shameless curi- 
osity, incorrect information, and complacent idi- 
ocy among all classes of the population. Persons 
who fall under the influence of this pest become 
so triumphantly ignorant that they cannot dis- 
tinguish between news and knowledge. They 
develop a morbid thirst for printed matter, and 
the more they read the less they learn. They are 
fit soil for the bacteria of folly and fanaticism. ' 

Now the men of thought, of cultivation, of 
reason in the community ought to be an antidote 
to these dangerous influences. Having been in- 
structed in the lessons of history and science and 
philosophy they are bound to contribute their 
knowledge to the service of society. As a rule 
they are willing enough to do this for pay, in 
the professions of law and medicine and teaching 
and divinity. What I plead for is the wider, 
nobler, unpaid service which an educated man 
renders to society simply by being thoughtful 
and by helping other men to think. 

The college men of a country ought to be its 



68 THE OPEN DOOR 

most conservative men ; that is to say, the men 
who do most to conserve it. They ought to be 
the men whom demagogues cannot inflame nor 
political bosses pervert. ^ They ought to bring 
wild theories to the test of reason, and withstand 
rash experiments with obstinate prudence. When 
it is proposed, for example, to enrich the whole 
nation by debasing its currency, they should be 
the men who demand time to think whether real 
wealth can be created by artificial legislation. 
And if they succeed in winning time to think, the 
danger will pass — or rather it will be transformed 
into some other danger requiring a new applica- 
tion of the salt of intelligence. For the ferment- 
ing activity of ignorance is incessant, and per- 
petual thoughtfulness is the price of social 
safety. 

But it is not ignorance alone that works harm 
in the body of society. Passion is equally dan- 
gerous. Take, for instance, a time when war is 
imminent. How easily and how wildly the pas- 
sions of men are roused by the mere talk of fight- 
ing. How ready they are to plunge into a fierce 
conflict for an unknown motive, for a base motive, 
or for no motive at all. Educated men should be 
the steadiest opponents of war while it is avoid- 
able. But when it becomes inevitable, save at 



SALT 69 

cost of a failure in duty and a loss of honor, 
then they should be the most vigorous advocates 
of carrying it to a swift, triumphant, and noble 
end. "No man ought to be too much educated to 
love his country and, if need be, to die for it. 
The culture which leaves a man without a flag is 
only one degree less miserable than that which 
leaves him without a God. To be empty of en- 
thusiasms and overflowing with criticisms is not a 
sign of cultivation, but of enervation. The best 
learning is that which intensifies a man's patriot- 
ism as well as clarifies it.^ The finest education is 
that which puts a man in closest touch with his 
fellow-men. The true intelligence is that which 
acts, not as cayenne pepper to sting the world, 
but as salt to cleanse and conserve it. 

II. Think, in the second place, of the duty 
which men of moral principle owe to society in 
regard to the evils which corrupt and degrade it. 
Of the existence of these evils we need to be re- 
minded again and again, just because we are com- 
paratively clean and decent and upright people. 
Men who live an orderly life are in great danger 
of doing nothing else. We wrap our virtue up in 
little bags of respectability and keep it in the 
storehouse of a safe reputation. But if it is 
genuine virtue it is worthy of a better use than 



70 THE OPEN DOOR 

that. It is fit, nay it is designed and demanded, 
to be used as salt, for the purifying of human 
hfe. 

There are multitudes of our fellow-men whose 
existence is dark, confused, and bitter. Some of 
them are groaning under the burden of want; 
partly because of their own idleness or incapacity, 
no doubt, but partly also because of the rapacity, 
greed, and injustice of other men. Some of them 
are tortured in bondage to vice ; partly by their 
own false choice, no doubt, but partly also for 
want of guidance and good counsel and human 
sympathy. Every great city contains centers of 
moral decay which an honest man cannot think 
of without horror, pity, and dread. The trouble 
is that many honest folk dislike these emotions so 
much that they shut their eyes and walk through 
the world with their heads in the air, breathing a 
little atmosphere of their own, and congratulating 
themselves that the world goes very well now. 
But is it well that the things which eat the heart 
out of manhood and womanhood should go on in 
all our great towns ? 

" Is it well that while we range with science, glorying in the 
time, 
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime ? 



SALT 71 

"There, among the glooming alleys, progress halts on palsied 
feet; 
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the 
street. 

" There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted 
floor, 
And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor." '-• 

Even in what we call respectable society, forces 
of corruption are at work. Are there no unright- 
eous practices in business, no false standards in 
social life, no licensed frauds and falsehoods in 
politics, no vile and vulgar tendencies in art and 
literature and journalism, in this sunny and self- 
complacent modern world of which we are a 
part ? All these things are signs of decay. The 
question for us as men of salt is : What are we 
going to do to arrest and counteract these ten- 
dencies ? It is not enough for us to take a nega- 
tive position in regard to them. If our influence 
is to be real, it must be positive. It is not enough 
to say " Touch not the unclean thing." On the 
contrary, we must touch it, as salt touches decay 
to check and overcome it. Good men are not 
meant to be simply like trees planted by rivers 
of water, flourishing in their own pride and for 
their own sake. They ought to be like the 
eucalyptus trees which have been set out in the 



72 THE OPEN DOOR 

marshes of the Campagna, from which a health- 
ful, tonic influence is said to be diffused to coun- 
tervail the malaria. They ought to be like the tree 
of paradise, " whose leaves are for the healing of 
nations." 

Where good men are in business, lying and 
cheating and gambling should be more difficult, 
truth and candor and fair dealing should be easier 
and more popular, just because of their presence. 
Where good men are in society, grossness of 
thought and speech ought to stand rebuked, high 
ideals and courtliness and chivalrous actions and 
" the desire of fame and all that makes a man," 
ought to seem at once more desirable and more 
attainable to every one who comes into contact 
with them. 

There have been men of this quality in the 
world. It is recorded of Bernardino of Siena, that 
when he came into the room, his gentleness and 
purity were so evident that all that was base and 
silly in the talk of his companions was abashed 
and fell into silence. Artists like Fra Angelico 
have made their pictures like prayers. Warriors 
like the Chevalier Bayard and Sir Philip Sidney 
and Henry Havelock and Chinese Gordon have 
dwelt amid camps and conflicts as Knights of the 
Holy Ghost. Philosophers like John Locke and 



SALT 73 

George Berkeley, men of science like Newton 
and Herschel, poets like Wordsworth and Tenny- 
son and Browning, have taught virtue by their 
lives as well as wisdom by their works. Human- 
itarians like Howard and Wilberforce and Raikes 
and Charles Brace have given themselves to noble 
causes. Every man who will has it in his power 
to make his life count for something positive in 
the redemption of society. And this is what 
every man of moral principle is bound to do if he 
wants to belong to the salt of the earth. 

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand 
high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift 
mankind a little higher. There is a nobler char- 
acter than that which is merely incorruptible. It 
is the character which acts as an antidote and 
preventive of corruption. Fearlessly to speak the 
words which bear witness to righteousness and 
truth and purity; patiently to do the deeds which 
strengthen virtue and kindle hope in your fellow- 
men ; generously to lend a hand to those who are 
trying to climb upward; faithfully to give your 
support and your personal help to the efforts 
which are making to elevate and purify the social 
life of the world — that is what it means to have 
salt in your character. And that is the way to 
make your life interesting and savory and power- 



74 THE OPEN DOOR 

ful. The men that have been happiest, and the 
men that are best remembered, are the men that 
have done good. 

What the world needs to-day is not a new sys- 
tem of ethics. It is simply a larger number of 
people who will make a steady effort to live up 
to the system that they have already. There is 
plenty of room for heroism in the plainest kind 
of duty. The greatest of all wars has been going 
on for centuries. It is the ceaseless, glorious 
conflict against the evil that is in the world. 
Every warrior who will enter that age-long battle 
may find a place in the army, and win his spurs, 
and achieve honor, and obtain favor with the great 
Captain of the Host, if he will but do his best 
to make life purer and finer for every one that 
lives. 

It is one of the burning questions of to-day 
whether university life and training really fit men 
for taking their share in this supreme conflict. 
There is no abstract answer; but every college 
class that graduates is a part of the concrete 
answer. Therein lies your responsibility, gentle- 
men. It lies with you to illustrate the meanness 
of an education which produces learned shirks 
and refined skulkers ; or to illuminate the perfec- 
tion of unselfish culture with the light of devo- 



SALT 75 



/- 



tion to humanity. It lies with you to confess that 
you have not been strong enough to assimilate 
your privileges ; or to prove that you are able to 
use all that you have learned for the end for which 
it was intended. ' I believe the difference in the 
results depends very much less upon the educa- 
tional system than it does upon the personal qual- 
ity of the teachers and the men. Richard Porson 
was a university man, and he seemed to live 
chiefly to drink port and read Greek. Thomas 
Guthrie was a university man, and he proved that 
he meant what he said in his earnest verse : — 

" I live for those who love me, 

For those who know me true, 
For the heaven that bends above me, 

And the good that I can do ; 
For the wrongs that need resistance, 
For the cause that lacks assistance, 
For the future in the distance, 

And the good that I can do." 

III. It remains only to speak briefly, in the 
third place, of the part which religion ought to 
play in the purifying, preserving, and sweetening 
of society. Hitherto I have spoken to you simply 
as men of inteUigence and men of principle. But 
the loftiest reach of reason and the strongest 
inspiration of morality is religious faith. I know 



76 THE OPEN DOOR 

there are some thoughtful men, upright men, 
unselfish and useful men, who say that they have 
no such faith. But they are very few. And the 
reason of their rarity is because it is immensely 
difficult to be unselfish and useful and thoughtful, 
without a conscious faith in God, and in the divine 
law, and in the gospel of salvation, and in the 
future life. I trust that none of you are going to 
try that desperate experiment. I trust that all 
of you have religion to guide and sustain you in 
life's hard and perilous adventure. If you have, I 
beg you to make sure that it is the right kind of 
religion. The name makes little difference. The 
outward form makes little difference. The test of 
its reality is its power to cleanse life and make it 
worth living; to save the things that are most 
precious in our existence from corruption and 
decay ; to lend a new luster to our ideals and to 
feed our hopes with inextinguishable light; to 
produce characters which shall fulfill Christ's 
word and be the salt of the earth. 

Religion is something which a man cannot in- 
vent for himself, nor keep to himself. If it does 
not show in his conduct it does not exist in his 
heart. If he has just barely enough of it to save 
himself alone, it is doubtful whether he has even 
enough for that. Religion ought to bring out 



SALT ^-j 

and intensify the flavor of all that is best in man- 
hood, and make it fit, to use Wordsworth's noble 
phrase — 

" For human nature's daily food." 

Good citizens, honest workmen, cheerful com- 
rades, true friends, gentle men — that is what the 
product of religion should be. And the power 
that produces such men is the great antiseptic of 
society, to preserve it from decay. 

Decay begins in discord. It is the loss of bal- 
ance in an organism. One part of the system gets 
too much nourishment, another part too little. 
Morbid processes are established. Tissues break 
down. In their debris all sorts of malignant 
growths take root. Ruin follows. 

Now this is precisely the danger to which the 
social organism is exposed. From this danger 
religion is meant to preserve us. Certainly there 
can be no true Christianity which does not aim at 
this result. It should be a balancing, compen- 
sating, regulating power. It should keep the 
relations between man and man, between class 
and class, normal and healthful and mutually 
beneficent. It should humble the pride of the 
rich, and moderate the envy of the poor. It 
should soften and ameliorate the unavoidable 
inequalities of life, and transform them from causes 



78. THE OPEN DOOR 

of jealous hatred into opportunities of loving and 
generous service. If it fails to do this it is salt 
without savor, and when a social revolution 
comes, as the consequence of social corruption, 
men will cast out the unsalted religion and tread 
it under foot. 

Was not this what happened in the French 
Revolution ? What did men care for the religion 
that had failed to curb sensuality and pride and 
cruelty under the oppression of the old regime, 
the religion that had forgotten to deal bread to 
the hungry, to comfort the afflicted, to break 
every yoke, and let the oppressed go free ? What 
did they care for the religion that had done little 
or nothing to make men understand and love and 
help one another ? Nothing. It was the first 
thing that they threw away in the madness of 
their revolt and trampled in the mire of their 
contempt. 

But was the world much better off without that 
false kind of religion than with it? Did the 
revolution really accomplish anything for the 
purification and preservation of society ? No, it 
only turned things upside down, and brought the 
elements that had been at the bottom to the top. 
It did not really change the elements, or sweeten 
life, or arrest the processes of decay. The only 



SALT 79 

thing that can do this is the true kind of religion, 
which brings men closer to one another by bring- 
ing them all nearer to God. 

Some people say that another revolution is 
coming in our own age and our own country. It 
is possible. There are signs of it. There has 
been a tremendous increase of luxury among the 
rich in the present generation. There has been a 
great increase of suffering among the poor in cer- 
tain sections of our country. It was a startling 
fact that nearly six millions of people in 1896 
cast a vote of practical discontent with the present 
social and commercial order. It may be that we 
are on the eve of a great overturning. I do not 
know. I am not a prophet nor the son of a 
prophet. But I know that there is one thing that 
can make a revolution needless, one thing that is 
infinitely better than any revolution ; and that is a 
real revival of religion — the religion that has 
already founded the hospital and the asylum and 
the free school, the religion that has broken the 
fetters of the slave and lifted womanhood out of 
bondage and degradation, and put the arm of its 
protection around the helplessness and innocence 
of childhood, the religion that proves its faith by 
its works, and links the preaching of the father- 
hood of God to the practice of the brotherhood 



8o THE OPEN DOOR 

of man. That religion is true Christianity, with 
plenty of salt in it which has not lost its savor. 

I believe that we are even now in the begin- 
ning of a renaissance of such religion. I 
believe that there is a rising tide of desire to find 
the true meaning of Christ's teaching, to feel the 
true power of Christ's life, to interpret the true 
significance of Christ's sacrifice for the redemption 
of mankind. I believe that never before were 
there so many young men of culture, of intelli- 
gence, of character, passionately in earnest to 
find the way of making their religion speak, not 
in word only, but in power. I call you to-day, 
my brethren, to take your part, not with the idle, 
the frivolous, the faithless, the selfish, the gilded 
youth, but with the earnest, the manly, the devout, 
the devoted, the golden youth. I summon you 
to do your share in the renaissance of religion for 
your own sake, for your fellow-men's sake, for 
your country's sake. On this fair Sunday, when 
all around us tells of bright hope and glorious 
promise, let the vision of our country, with her 
perils, with her opportunities, with her tempta- 
tions, with her splendid powers, with her threat- 
ening sins, rise before our souls. What needs 
she more, in this hour, than the cleansing, saving, 
conserving influence of right religion ? What 



SALT 8 1 

better service could we render her than to set our 
hves to the tune of these words of Christ, and be 
indeed the salt of our country, and, through her 
growing power, of the whole earth ? Ah, bright 
will be the day, and full of glory, when the bells 
of every church, of every schoolhouse, of every 
college, of every university, ring with the music 
of this message, and find their echo in the hearts 
of the youth of America. That will be the chime 
of a new age. 

" Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Ring out the darkness of the land. 
Ring in the Christ that is to be." 
6 



V 

A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 

*' Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you : and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world. Amen." — St. Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. 

Here is the first command of the risen Christ 
to His disciples. It is the divine charter of the 
Christian Church. Three facts are written upon 
the very face of this charter : — 

I. The Church of Jesus Christ was founded as 
a missionary enterprise. It was not intended to 
stand still, but to " go." It was not intended to 
be self-contained, but to " make disciples " and 
" baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son» 
and the Holy Ghost." It was not intended to be 
silent, but to " teach " the things that Christ com- 
manded. It is of the very essence of Christianity 
that it is an advancing, conquering religion. The 
Church is the body in which the Spirit of Christ 
is to live and work. The Spirit of Christ is mis- 

85 



86 THE OPEN DOOR 

sions. When that Spirit wanes the Church is 
sick; when that Spirit dies the Church expires. 

2. The missionary enterprise of the Church has 
no national or geographical limits. It has a 
method which may be called the method of 
radiation. Beginning at Jerusalem, it is to spread 
outward through Judaea and Samaria, unto the 
uttermost parts of the earth. The circles are 
concentric, but not coterminous. There is no fixed 
distance at which they are to stop. There is no 
line where the gospel must halt and turn back 
upon itself, and say, " Thus far can I go, and no 
farther." Above all there is no wall or barrier 
to divide home missions from foreign missions. 
To separate these two things from each other is 
to divide them both from Christ. For He never 
saw or acknowledged any such division. He 
called disciples in order that they might call other 
disciples. He chose nations in order that they 
might be messengers to other nations. He gave 
Christianity a home in the world in order that 
it might make the whole world its home. The 
sole boundary of the religion of Jesus is the ring 
of the round earth. 

3. There is no limit of time in the commission 
which Christ gives to His Church. He does not 
tell His disciples that they are to preach and teach 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 87 

for one century, for five centuries, for twenty cen- 
turies, and then pause, to wait for the restoration 
of the kingdom. On the contrary, He says that 
it is not for them *' to know the times or the 
seasons, which the Father hath put in His own 
power." The one thing for them to do is to go, 
and keep on going; to preach, and keep on 
preaching; for if they do this He will be with 
them even unto the end of the world. The com- 
mission is universal and perpetual. The " limit 
of space " is the globe itself The " limit of time " 
is all the time there is. Until the end of the 
world is reached, the commission runs : " Go ye 
therefore and disciple all nations." 

Now I submit to you that this is a fair, honest, 
and reasonable interpretation of the charter which 
Jesus Christ gave to His Church. These three 
facts are clear : He intended it to be a missionary 
enterprise, for the whole world, and to the end of 
time. But in the face of these facts there are 
some people who say, " We believe in Christianity, 
but we do not believe in foreign missions "; and 
there are a good many more people who say, 
" We are Christians, but we have no particular 
interest in foreign missions "; and there is a vast 
number of people who say nothing at all about it, 
but give conclusive evidence of a lack of faith 



88 THE OPEN DOOR 

by a large and unmistakable absence of works. 
There may be some of these people in this con- 
gregation; and if so I am heartily glad of it, and 
can assure them that they are most welcome. 
Everybody is welcome here, whatever his opinions 
be on any subject; and I should be especially 
glad this morning to have an opportunity of 
speaking to some who may be indifferent or even 
in opposition, provided they are wilHng to listen, 
with candid minds, to a plain and straightforward 
statement of the facts. It may be possible to 
remove their difficulties and induce them to re- 
consider their position. It may be possible to 
say something to confirm and increase the interest 
of those who are already favorably inclined 
toward the subject. It may be possible to fortify 
the faith of those who believe in the cause, but are 
sometimes disturbed by the arguments which are 
urged against it. At all events, I hold a Brief for 
Foreign Missions to-day, and I propose to plead 
that cause in the presence of this assembly. 

You will observe at the outset that the cause 
occupies the position, not of the prosecution, but 
of the defense. The command of Christ and the 
original charter of the Church are in its favor. 
As long as these stand unassailed and unre- 
pealed the cause is justified. The burden of proof 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 89 

rests on the other side. All that we have to do 
is to answer the objections, and if that can be 
done the case is ours. And this is what I pro- 
pose to do this morning — to meet fairly the argu- 
ments against foreign missions, and show you, 
not merely that they are too weak to stand against 
the command of Christ, but that every one of 
them really enforces and intensifies that command, 
and is in fact an argument for foreign missions. 
I want to turn the enemies' guns and " carry the 
war into Africa." 

Let us take the common objections in order. 

I. "There are so many heathen at home that 
it is foolish to waste the strength of the Church 
in trying to preach to the heathen abroad." 

I admit the premise at once, but I deny the 
conclusion ; for, in order to establish it, you must 
show that the way to convert the heathen at home 
is to neglect the heathen abroad. But the facts 
are all the other way ; and if the history of the 
Church proves anything, it proves that she has 
always done her best for those who are nearest to 
her, when she has been doing most for those who 
are far away from her. 

There are heathen at home ; and we ought 
never to forget or neglect them. But how many 
are they ? Do you suppose there are ten million 



90 THE OPEN DOOR 

people in this country who do not know about 
Christianity? Are there forty million people 
whom you would venture to call heathen ? There 
cannot be more than that, for all the rest are in 
connection with Christian Churches. But in the 
world outside there are a thousand million heathen. 
In China three hundred million : in India two 
hundred and fifty million : a vast black wilderness 
of heathendom, in which the lost and wretched 
myriads of human beings are wandering without 
a ray of light. Every one of them needs Christ 
just as much as you and I need Him. What an 
immense, what an incalculable claim has this un- 
happy and benighted world on us to whom God 
has given the gospel ! 

Moreover, the vast majority of these fellow- 
creatures are heathen by necessity ; they have 
never heard the gospel. But in our own land the 
greater number are heathen by choice ; they have 
heard the religion of Christ, but do not accept it. 
This is no reason why we shall give up trying to 
win them ; but I ask you whether one of the 
very reasons which make it hard to win them is 
not the fact that the Christian Church seems so 
forgetful, so careless of the fate of the great world ? 
Nothing could do more to make Christianity 
potent at home, than to see it really anxious 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 91 

and eager and devoted to help and bless and save 
all men everywhere. The very effort to fulfill 
Christ's command and preach the gospel to every 
creature would be the noblest proof of the reality 
and beauty of His religion. Darkness is the same 
wherever it exists ; it is all one kingdom ; and the 
darkness that still lingers in our own land will 
never be conquered and expelled until the Church 
of Christ really girds herself and goes forth to 
vanquish the mighty strongholds of night and 
death throughout the world. Then her light will 
shine, and the gleam that is strong enough to 
pierce the shadows in the distance will irradiate 
the gloom that gathers at her feet. 

More light is what the world wants. And do 
you think that it will make less light to kindle a 
greater fire ? Do you suppose that one more 
Christian in China will make one less Christian 
in America? Do you imagine that one less 
effort to preach the gospel in Africa will mean 
one more effort to preach the gospel in America ? 
Do you suppose that one dollar that is given for 
foreign missions will be taken from home mis- 
sions ? I tell you, no ! It will be taken from 
self-indulgence, from avarice, from worldly luxury. 
Peter is not robbed when Paul is supported. 
Demas, the worldling, Simon Magus, the as- 



92 THE OPEN DOOR 

trologer, and Demetrius, the idol-maker, are the 
only ones that suffer. Peter and Paul grow 
strong together, and the farther the one goes 
abroad, the better the other works at home. In 
1 8 12 a man in the Senate of Massachusetts ob- 
jected to the incorporation of the American 
Board of Foreign Missions on the ground that 
" the country had no religion to spare." If that 
objection had prevailed I believe by this time the 
country would have had no religion to keep. 

Do you really think that the effort to send the 
gospel to the heathen has hindered the evangel- 
izing of our own land in one solitary instance ? 
Has not the Church at home become more earnest, 
more devoted, more generous, more aggressive, 
more useful, just because, and in as far as, she 
has begun to try to do something for the whole 
race of man ? Would you not care more, and do 
more, for the success of the gospel here, if you 
cared more and did more for its success every- 
where ? 

The fact that there are heathen at home is, 
then, an argument why we should do our best to 
preach Christ to the heathen everywhere. That 
will be consistent. And a consistent Christianity 
is the only kind that can convince men and con- 
vert them. 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 93 

2. " Foreign missions are not wisely con- 
ducted ; the missionaries are not well chosen ; 
they live too luxuriously; the work is extrava- 
gantly done ; it costs five dollars to send ten dol- 
lars to the heathen." 

To this objection, which probably includes 
more misstatements than any other argument of 
equal length which the mind of man has ever 
devised, I interpose a general and particular 
denial, and appeal to fact against prejudice. It 
would take too long to make a complete exhibi- 
tion of the errors which are here confidently 
asserted, and which have been so often refuted 
that the only wonder is that any one should be 
foolish enough to repeat them, or credulous 
enough to believe them. 

It does not cost five dollars to send ten dollars 
to the heathen, nor two dollars, nor one dollar. 
As a matter of fact, it costs less than sixty cents. 
The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions last 
year collected and sent into the foreign field one 
million and twenty-nine thousand dollars. The 
expenses of administration were sixty-eight thou- 
sand dollars. That is a little less than six per 
cent. Do you know of any business that is more 
cheaply conducted? Certainly there is none in 
New York. 



94 THE OPEN DOOR 

The missionaries do not live luxuriously. They 
live laboriously and simply and honestly. Our 
Church supports two thousand six hundred of 
them, American and native, at an average expense 
of less than four hundred dollars a year apiece 
for them and all their work. You cannot have 
much luxury on four hundred dollars a year. 
These missionaries spend less in a year for their 
whole living than some of you spend for your 
opera and theatre tickets. 

And where do the reports of their luxury come 
from? From travelers whom the missionaries 
have fed at their tables and sheltered in their 
houses, and who come away to reproach their 
hosts with extravagance. People who are willing 
to offend against the first law of hospitality are 
not likely to have a very strict regard for the law 
of truth. You should take their reports with a 
grain of salt. Besides, suppose some of the mis- 
sionaries do live well. Are they not entitled to 
do so ? When you send an agent into a foreign 
country you do not want him to appear as a 
beggar. When you have heavy work for your 
horse you do not begin by cutting down his oats. 
I know of a Presbyterian missionary in China 
who walked twelve hundred miles in seven months 
and preached three times a day ; and his travel- 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 95 

ing expenses were less than one hundred dollars ; 
and If you think that is luxury, I wish you had 
more of it. 

As to the quality of the men, I should be per- 
fectly willing to match them against any other 
set of men engaged in the service of any other 
enterprise in the world. Look at Africa. Let 
Stanley, and his front column, and his rear column, 
defile before you. These are the ambassadors 
of commerce ! And then let the missionaries ap- 
pear, Livingstone, and Hannington, and Mackay, 
and Bushnell, and Lindley, and Mackenzie, and 
all that noble company. These are the ambassa- 
dors of the cross ! Which think you is the finer 
army in the sight of the world ? 

I will tell you what the British East India 
Company said at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century : " The sending of Christian missionaries 
into our eastern possessions is the maddest, most 
expensive, most unwarranted project that was 
ever proposed by a lunatic enthusiast." I will 
tell you what the English Lieutenant-Governor 
of Bengal said at the close of the nineteenth cen- 
tury: "In my judgment Christian missionaries 
have done more lasting good to the people of 
India than all other agencies combined." The 
agency which has justified its existence, done its 



96 THE OPEN DOOR 

work, and won the approval of its bitterest oppo- 
nents, after that fashion, cannot possibly be fool- 
ish, feeble, extravagant or dishonest. You cannot 
find any other human enterprise of modern times 
which has been as wisely, as prudently, as eco- 
nomically, as honorably conducted as this work 
of Christian missions. 

3. '' The great thing to be desired is the unity 
of the Church ; but the sending out of mission- 
aries by the different denominations perpetuates 
the divisions among Christians; therefore the 
work of foreign missions should be stopped." 

On the contrary, the unity of the Church is 
one of the very strongest arguments for foreign 
missions; for the only line along which that unity 
can be reached is the line of cooperation in the 
work of Christ ; and the best field in the world 
for cooperation is the preaching of the gospel to 
the heathen. There, if anywhere, standing face 
to face with the black mass of paganism and 
idolatry, the disciples of Jesus can feel that they 
are one. " In a country where people pray to 
cows," said Lord Macaulay, " the differences that 
divide Christians seem of small account." 

The missionaries do not go out to preach 
Methodism or Congregationalism or Presbyte- 
rianism ; even if they wanted to do it, they would 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 97 

find it impossible ; they have to preach Christ, in 
the plainest words, in the simplest way ; for that 
is the only preaching that will do any good. All 
that remains of denominationalism is an organi- 
zation behind them to supply the money and the 
men for the common work. Regiments from dif- 
ferent states fight for the same flag. At home 
there may be little rivalries ; in the field the only 
rivalry is to do the best service. You are bound 
to support your organization well, not only for its 
own credit, but because it is the link which binds 
you to the common cause. There is no way in 
which you can do more to advance the real and 
living unity of the Christian Church than by 
giving, through the nearest channel, to the work 
of foreign missions. For it is in that work that 
Christ is most simply preached, and from that 
work to-day the brightest beams of dawn are 
rising to presage the reunion of Christendom. I 
know of nothing more beautiful in the history 
of the modern Christian Church than the union 
of the converts of different missions into one 
*' Church of Christ in Japan," with a creed so 
short that it can be printed on a single page, 
and so simple that I long for the day when our 
own Presbyterian Church shall have one like it. 
The hope of the unity of the Church in the 
7 



98 THE OPEN DOOR 

simplicity of the faith is an argument, not against, 
but for, foreign missions. 

4. " The work of foreign missions does not 
pay; it is not a success." 

If this means that the work of missions is not 
yet completely successful, the assertion must be 
frankly admitted. But this does not prove that 
the work should be abandoned ; on the contrary, 
it proves that it should be continued and enlarged. 

The existence of disease is not an argument 
against the practice of medicine ; it is an argu- 
ment in its favor. The fact that heathenism is not 
yet conquered and extirpated is the very reason 
why we should keep on with the work of mis- 
sions, and put into it an infinitely larger force of 
men, of money, of prayer, of effort, than we have 
ever done yet. 

But if this objection means that the results of 
foreign missions are not enough to encourage us 
to go on with them, then I deny the assertion, 
and appeal again to the facts. There is no enter- 
prise among men which can show a better record, 
in comparison with the means used and the diffi- 
culties met, than the missionary enterprise. 

What do you call success ? Is it a success to 
have opened new continents to commerce and 
brought civilization to new nations ? Then mis- 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 99 

slons have succeeded, for they have led the way 
into Africa and Australia and Asia; they have 
changed the South Sea Islands from the terror of 
navigators into peaceful centres of trade ; they 
have won the confidence of strange and hostile 
races, and paved the way for the interchange of 
commodities and the entrance of civilizing influ- 
ences. I do not say that commerce has always 
made the best use of these opportunities. For 
too often, the very men who have fought and 
opposed the missionary at home, have meanly 
crawled behind him abroad, to gather an infamous 
profit from the trade in drunkenness and death, 
along the paths which they would not have dared 
to open. But that is their fault, their sin, their 
shame. The man who makes a road is a bene- 
factor. The man who uses it to carry poison to 
his fellow-men is a miscreant. But for all that, 
road-making is an honorable and a useful work. 
Missionaries have done more to make safe high- 
ways through the world than any other set of 
men. And to-day clean commerce, honest com- 
merce, legitimate commerce gets more returns 
from missions in a year than all the money that 
the Church has ever put into them. 

What do you call success ? Is it a success to 
make vast contributions to human science and 
.LofC. 



loo THE OPEN DOOR 

literature? Then missions have succeeded, for 
the " Prince of Geographers," Carl Ritter, says 
that without them his books could not have been 
written ; Max Muller says that their contributions 
to philology and history are invaluable and indis- 
pensable ; there is not one of the departments of 
botany or zoology or meteorology which they 
have not enriched ; the knowledge of the languages 
of the earth has been more advanced by the effort 
to render the Bible into every tongue than by all 
other causes put together. 

What do you call success ? Is it a success to 
adorn the page of history with glorious examples 
of faith and courage and self-sacrifice ? Then 
missions have succeeded ; for there is no roll of 
honor that shines with brighter names than the 
list of men and women who have given their lives 
to bring the heathen to Christ, and won the 
martyr's crown, in Burmese prisons and Indian 
massacres, among the snow-clad mountains of 
Thibet and the burning desert of Arabia, on the 
cliffs of Madagascar and beside the rivers of China, 
on the shining sands of South Sea Islands and 
beneath the black shadow of African forests. Man- 
hood seems crowned, ennobled, glorified when we 
look at the heroism of Christian missionaries. 
And I dare you to put our easy, selfish, inglorious 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS loi 

lives beside these names which shall live for ever, 
and then say that they have failed and we have 
succeeded. 

What do you call success ? Is it a success to 
win souls for Christ out of the very heart of 
heathendom, and plant real and living churches 
in the ancient abode of darkness and death? 
Then missions have succeeded. Let me tell you 
just what our own missionary enterprise has 
accomplished. Thirty years ago we had three 
thousand heathen converts. To-day we have 
forty-four thousand; fourteenfold increase; while 
the Church at home has only doubled. We have 
fifty-three churches in Mexico, and ten in Africa, 
and seventy-three in China, and thirty-six in Japan, 
and twenty-nine in Syria, and twenty-six in 
Persia, and more than two hundred partly organ- 
ized in Korea. We have nearly thirty thousand 
pupils in our schools. And last year alone more 
than five thousand persons stood up, in the face 
of dangers and difficulties which you cannot even 
begin to imagine, and confessed Jesus Christ as 
the Son of God. 

Now I say nothing of the broader work of mis- 
sions, which cannot be tabulated — the work of 
spreading the general principles of Christianity 
among new peoples, the work of education, the 



I02 THE OPEN DOOR 

work of healing the sick, the work of letting in 
the light upon the darkness of idolatry and pre- 
paring the way for the coming of the kingdom. 
But taking the net results as they can be counted, 
I say they are wonderful and hopeful. And when 
you, my brother, have found one hardened sinner 
at home, and turned him from error, and brought 
him into the Church of Christ, against the oppo- 
sition of his friends and family, and at the sacri- 
fice of his worldly prospects — then, and not till 
then — will you have a right to find fault with 
the missionary enterprise which has done that 
thing for thousands of heathen while you have 
been sitting still and finding fault. 

5. " Foreign peoples have their own civilizations 
and religions, and therefore we need not trouble 
ourselves about them." 

Yes, they have ; but that is the very reason why 
we must " trouble ourselves about them." Their 
civilizations are full of degradation, of oppres- 
sion, of cruelty, under which women groan, and 
children perish, and men live like beasts. Their 
religions are often tinctured with sad and gloomy 
superstitions, or embodied in rituals of blood 
and shame. Think of the religions of Africa 
which teach men to slay and devour one another; 
the religions of India with their licentious rites 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 103 

and brutal adorations. Think of the civilization 
of China. Let your fancy picture those nightly 
processions through the streets of Chinese cities, 
long files of young blind girls decked with gar- 
lands for the sacrifice of lust ; friendless, helpless, 
homeless ; marching each with her hands upon 
the shoulders of the one before her ; groping their 
way through an endless midnight to sin and 
shame and suffering and death. Tell me, is that 
kind of civilization a reason why you should not 
" trouble yourself about the heathen ? " 

What have Confucius and Buddha done for 
these captives, victims, sufferers ? What do they 
propose to do ? Nothing. The only thing that 
can help them is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And 
because He has given it to you, you owe it to 
them. It is a debt from which you cannot escape, 
save at the sacrifice of the instincts of your human- 
ity and the promises of your religion. If you 
have no pity for others, what right have you to 
expect that God will have pity for you ? 

Well then, how shall this debt be paid ? What 
shall we do to preach the gospel to every creature? 

There are three ways in which we may help the 
cause : — 

I. We may help by personal consecration of the 
heart and life to this service. That is the noblest 



I04 THE OPEN DOOR 

way; the way of highest honor and most costly 
sacrifice. Would that some of you in this church, 
young men and young women to whom the Mas- 
ter has given so much, might feel the mighty de- 
sire to preach the gospel, and say to the Lord, 
" Here am I, send me." That would be a crown 
of glory on your life. 

II. The next way to help the cause is to give 
money to it. If you cannot go into the field 
yourself, you ought to have a substitute. How 
easy it would be for some of you to say, " I will 
have my own missionary, my own messenger of 
Christ to the heathen," and to give the pledge 
which would fill another place in the front rank 
of the battle, and keep another voice testifying to 
the love of Jesus in the dark places. I do not 
say you would not miss the money. You would 
miss it ; and that is the reason why you ought to 
give it. You have found little joy or comfort in 
giving to missions hitherto, just because you have 
not given enough to feel it. Try the other plan. 
If you gave five dollars last year, give ten this 
year. If it was fifty dollars, take the pen and 
write one hundred. Make a sacrifice. Deny 
yourself something. Then you will begin to 
feel that your religion is real, and that you have 
a share in witnessing for Christ to the ends of 



A BRIEF FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 105 

the earth. Our missionary enterprise is stagger- 
ing and halting to-day because the Church does 
not support it. Men and women are waiting 
to go, but they cannot go because you will not 
send them. Bear a hand in the work — not a 
little finger, but a whole hand — and give to mis- 
sions in such a way that you will know that you 
have given, and then the heathen will know it, 
and your Master will know it and reward you 
for it. 

III. The last way to help the cause of missions, 
and the greatest, is to pray for it. But I do not 
think we have any right to use that way unless 
we also follow one of the others. 



VI 

THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 



VI 

THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 

" Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from 
heaven, and consume them ?" — Luke ix. 54. 

" Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ; and 
every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." — 
I John iv. 7. 

The common conception of the person and 
character of the apostle John regards him as a 
soft, affectionate dreamer. We imagine him as he 
is usually drawn by the painters, a fair, effeminate 
youth, with long curling hair, and a lackadaisical 
expression. Now that he was a youth is certain ; 
that he was of a fair countenance is possible, per- 
haps even probable ; but that he was in any sense 
effeminate is an utter misconception. He was no 
idle dreamer of dreams, no mild religious mystic. 
He and his brother James were called Boanerges, 
sons of thunder, men of fiery courage, mighty 
power. His symbol was not the meek and mel- 
ancholy dove mourning in solitude, but the royal 
eagle, broad of wing, keen of eye, sweeping with 
fearless breast far up into the azure, bathed in the 

109 



no THE OPEN DOOR 

full splendors of God's sunlight. John was no deli- 
cate, luxurious religionist, content to be " carried 
to the skies on flowery beds of ease." He had 
his own fight to wage, his own temptations to 
vanquish, his own adversary in the heart to con- 
quer. And because he fought the fight bravely, 
enduring hardship as becometh a good soldier, 
his Master loved him with a peculiar love. 

In looking at the development of the character 
of John, as it is recorded in the gospels and his 
own epistles, we shall find a course of affairs 
which is best summed up in two words : — 

Antagonism and transformation. 

I. First, I think, we shall see the character of 
John in antagonism to his Master. Certain 
natural qualities and traits in the man put him 
out of sympathy with Jesus in the methods which 
He pursued in estabHshing His kingdom. John 
was inclined to a different course. He found 
himself in opposition, dissatisfied, perhaps even 
angry. 

The first of these antagonistic qualities, and 
probably the most fundamental, was a hot and 
zealous temper. His nature was quick, high- 
strung, impetuous. He was full of fire and force. 
Believing in Jesus with all his heart, John wished 
an instant and complete success for his ministry. 



THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN in 

Slow, patient teaching is well enough ; healing 
the sick is well enough ; provided they succeed. 
But if they do not, if the people will not believe, 
some more heroic measure must be tried. Men 
must come into the kingdom of God : be per- 
suaded in, drawn in, led in, if possible; but if not, 
they must be frightened in, driven in ; any way 
they must come in. Christ's kingdom must 
arrive at once, and if any man stand in the way 
let him be burned with fire. 

It was this headlong, untrained zeal that made 
John flame out so when passing through the 
inhospitable towns of Samaria. " What right," 
he cried, " what right have these people to stand 
in thy way, O Lord ? What right have they to 
let their narrow national bigotry blind their eyes, 
and harden their hearts, and shut their doors 
against the Christ? Shall we command fire to 
break out from heaven, as Elias did to his ene- 
mies, and consume them ?" How gentle was the 
rebuke, how wise the answer of Jesus to this 
question of John : " You do not yet understand 
the spirit of my gospel, the spirit of love and 
peace. I am come to persuade men, not to 
force them. If men are evil, I am not sent to 
slay and burn them, but to win them by the 
truth and save them from their sins. We must 



112 THE OPEN DOOR 

SOW in patience and hope, God will give the 
increase in His own good time." 

The second quality of antagonism in John was 
his ambition. That last infirmity of noble minds 
was the natural growth of such a character as 
his. His clear fine spirit desired a lofty place. 
He wanted glory and honor and power. His 
mind was still possessed by the idea that Christ's 
kingdom was to have a physical manifestation, 
was to unfold into a splendid domination of the 
earth. Filled with this thought he and his brother 
James came to Jesus begging that they might sit 
enthroned on either side of Him. How that vain 
request must have hurt Jesus! " Can ye bear the 
sorrows and pains that I must bear ?" ** Yea, 
Lord," reply the overconfident disciples. " Ye 
shall indeed bear my sorrows and endure my 
anguish, and experience shall teach you how 
blind you have been. I cannot confer the glory 
of God's kingdom by arbitrary favor, as govern- 
ment offices are conferred. It is the fruit and the 
reward of character. Make yourself fit for it, 
learn to be as pure and teachable as a little child, 
and leave the rest to your heavenly Father." 

n. Now you observe in regard to both of these 
antagonizing qualities in His young disciple, that 
the method of Jesus was not eradication but trans- 



THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 113 

formation. He did not despise and condemn them 
as utteHy bad. He recognized zeal and ambition 
as natural forces, to be changed, directed, trans- 
formed into mighty agencies for good. And that 
is what Jesus did for John. By constant, patient 
teaching, but most of all by the power of His 
example, Jesus gave these qualities a higher form 
and guided them into their true channels. I can 
conceive of no influence more potent to enlighten 
and ennoble such a character as John's than a 
life of constant contact with Jesus of Nazareth. 
How it must have sanctified and illumined his 
zeal to see his Master laboring so earnestly and 
patiently to win souls, enduring the contradiction 
of sinners, praying for His enemies, and giving 
His Hfe as a ransom for those who hated Him ! 
Think how it must have purified and chastened 
John's ambition to see our blessed Lord, at the 
Last Supper, bend to wash the disciples feet! 
That glorious example taught John more than all 
formal doctrine. It had a mysterious blessed 
power to transform his very life. 

We cannot trace more closely the process of 
transformation in the character of John. But we 
can see the result in his life and labors. Those 
very qualities which were his weakness became 
his strength. Those traits which once put him in 



114 THE OPEN DOOR 

antagonism to Christ, afterward bound him most 
closely to his Master in love and service. 

His fiery zeal was purified and exalted into a 
clear, passionate desire to win souls in the way 
which Christ had appointed. The divine commis- 
sion, " Go, preach the gospel to every creature," 
took hold of John's heart and filled it with eager 
courage. He went out with Peter, preaching and 
teaching and building up the churches of Judaea. 
When the Christians were expelled by persecu- 
tion from Jerusalem, it was John who gathered 
them together in a place of refuge. Then, accord- 
ing to the most ancient tradition, he went down 
into Asia to follow up and complete the labors 
of Paul. He finally remained as bishop and pas- 
tor of the Church at Ephesus. 

See now what has become of John's ambition. 
He is content to follow in the footsteps of another 
apostle, to dwell in a distant city of the Gentiles, 
in poverty and reproach, to accept an office in the 
feeble and persecuted Church of Jesus as the end 
of his life. Love to Christ has regenerated even 
his desires, has become the supreme and regnant 
passion, has made him ambitious only to serve 
and be like his beloved Master. 

It was in this spirit that John accepted the 
bishopric and ruled in Ephesus. Love was the 



THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 115 

centre and theme of his ministry. He taught 
love, preached love, practiced love. Many and 
beautiful are the traditions of his life. It is said 
that at one time a noble and amiable youth was 
committed by his parents to the guardianship of 
John. He was obliged to go away on a long 
journey and left his ward in the care of some of 
the brethren. On the Apostle's return he was 
told that the youth had fallen into evil ways, had 
been tempted off into the wilderness by a band 
of desperate robbers, and had become their leader. 
John was filled with sorrow and self-reproach. 
He went out into the wild country, penetrated to 
the stronghold of the robbers' band, seized the 
young man by the hand, kissed it, and calling 
him by his familiar name, brought him back again 
to Ephesus. 

Filled with such labors of love and glorified 
with visions of heavenly mysteries, the long years 
of the apostle wear away. Out in the great 
Church of Ephesus, one Sunday morning, a vast 
congregation is gathered. They are waiting for 
some one. A wide sea of faces is turned upward. 
An expectant hush rests over the crowd. An old 
man is borne in by his attendants. His long hair 
and beard are white as snow. His eyes shine 
with a soft and gentle Hght. He lifts a tremu- 



ii6 THE OPEN DOOR 

lous hand. His voice is faint and slow as he 

speaks. Hark ! 

" Little children, love one another !" 

The words fall like a benediction. They are 

the last words of that disciple whom Jesus loved. 

Now let us dwell for a few moments on the 
practical lessons to be drawn from this great and 
beautiful change in the life of John, and see how 
they bear upon our own relations to Jesus Christ 
and our discipleship to Him. There are three 
truths which seem to lie embedded in this experi- 
ence of the apostle. 

I. Natural quaHties which put us into antagon- 
ism to Christ ought not to drive us away from 
Him. 

There are many traits and dispositions, desires 
and qualities in human nature which put men in 
a position of unsympathy with the religion of 
Christ, make them feel uneasy and discontented 
under His guidance, dispose them to hang back 
from His service. Some of these traits of char- 
acter are evil in themselves, such as untruthful- 
ness, selfishness, intemperance. And these are 
things to which no man ought to cling. They 
are stains upon his life, and he ought to rejoice 
that in following Christ he must trample these 



THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 117 

shameful and unmanly things under his feet. 
Surely no one of you will be kept away from 
Christ by the reluctance to give up that which 
degrades your character, and makes you base and 
unworthy even in the scale of manhood. But it is 
not of these things that I wish to speak so much 
as of those qualities not good or bad in them- 
selves, but depending entirely upon the objects to 
which they are directed, and the way in which 
they are exercised. 

Take such a quality as physical courage and 
strength. There are many young men who are 
kept away from the Church by a false notion that 
these things are out of place there — that a Chris- 
tian has no use for bravery and vigor, no scope 
for the exercise of well-trained bodily powers and 
a bold, fearless spirit But where do we find such 
a notion of life save in the morbid theories of 
weak fanatics. The Christian must indeed keep 
his body and spirit under control, he must not be 
a mere animal or a reckless bravo ; but within 
those limits he may exercise all his daring and 
skill and strength. The Church has need of brave 
soldiers, strong laborers, dauntless explorers. 
Where would she be now had it not been for the 
bravery and endurance of those first apostles of 
the gospel ? Where would our Protestant Church 



ii8 THE OPEN DOOR 

be had not the Reformers known how to wield 
the sword as well as read the Bible ? Is not the 
world better and more Christian for the bravery 
of Luther and Livingstone and Havelock ? "I 
write unto you young men because you are 
strong." That was a good reason ; for Jesus 
Christ has need of strong and brave disciples, to 
stand up well against the assaults of evil, to push 
through desert and jungle, over mountains and 
stormy seas with the message of the gospel, to 
endure hardness as good soldiers, to fight and not 
be weary, to run and not faint. 

An eager and impetuous zeal often puts men 
out of sympathy with Christ. They find Chris- 
tianity too slow, too imperfect in its methods and 
results. Sometimes this zeal takes the form of 
self-criticism. Men say : " I want a religion that 
shall make me good altogether and at once. I 
want to feel that I am utterly changed, transfigured, 
renewed ; and the lack of this is what keeps me 
away from Christ." Is that true ? Are you 
sincere? Then how mad you are to stay away 
from Christ. For where else shall you find even 
the beginnings of that blessed change which you 
desire ? Is it not better to have it slowly than 
not at all ? And if you come to Him, you will 
find that your zeal to be made holy is not half 



THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 119 

so great as His willingness to help you and to 
perfect His will in your life. 

But more often this antagonistic overzeal ex- 
presses itself in harsh criticism of the Church and 
dissatisfaction with her success. Men complain 
that so few Christians are Christlike and so few 
sinners are converted. Now if that be merely a 
hypocritical excuse for avoiding the service of 
Christ there is nothing to be said. There is no 
Pharisaism so contemptible or so incorrigible. 
But if it spring from an honest and fervent zeal 
for the cause of Christ and a longing that His 
kingdom may have a wider and more glorious 
success, then it will not stand outside and spend 
its strength in bitter criticism, but come inside and 
labor earnestly for reformation. And the more 
eagerly and zealously men labor for the kingdom 
of Christ, the better they will understand that His 
methods are the best, and that the kingdom is 
to be established not by calling dow^n fire from 
heaven, but by the earnest, patient teaching of 
divine truth and the manifestation of Christhke 
love. 

2. These very qualities which seem at first, 
antagonistic, may become the noblest and most 
blessed in the service of Christ. 

He does not propose to eradicate and destroy 



I20 THE OPEN DOOR 

them, but to purify, direct, and use them in His 
kingdom, as the skillful inventor binds the winds 
to industry and makes the rushing torrents do his 
work. I have spoken of the noble tasks which 
physical courage and strength have performed 
for Christ. The life of John has shown us how 
a high-strung and ambitious nature may be used 
in His service. What a grand quality is zeal 
when it is sanctified and guided by a true devo- 
tion to Christ ! That zeal which makes martyrs 
and missionaries and reformers — that is what the 
Church needs to-day, a zeal that shall make us 
restless and discontented in the right way : not 
discontented with the plans and methods of Christ, 
but with our own feeble and imperfect execution 
of them ; so that we shall strive to make Chris- 
tianity more active, more thorough, more aggres- 
sive, to remove the obstacles, the shameful and 
harmful inconsistencies, to clear the way so that 
the gospel of Christ may have free course and be 
glorified. 

So also of true ambition. It can be made most 
useful and glorious in the service of Christ. 
"Covet earnestly the best gifts," wrote the apostle 
Paul. What a noble and blessed ambition was 
his ! To climb ever higher and higher in his 
spiritual attainments, to be more and more 



THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 121 

effective in his labors for Christ. If we could 
only get more of this right ambition how it 
would purify and ennoble our modern life ! We 
should be rid of the insane thirst for office in 
church and state. We should desire not to be 
famous, but to do good ; not to rule, but to be 
fit for it. We should long for character rather 
than reputation, for inward merit rather than out- 
ward honor. Our aspirations after a pure and 
lofty life would lift us above our present mean- 
ness and littleness, and we should press eagerly 
toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling 
of God in Christ Jesus. 

3. Learn, finally, that the way to have our 
natures thus nobly transformed is by a close and 
living contact with Christ. His teaching. His 
example, His companionship alone can change us 
into His image. 

There is an eastern legend of a rose so sweet 
that even the earth which lies around its roots 
becomes permeated with fragrance and little bits 
of it are sold as amulets and worn by princes. 
You and I are but common clay, but if we will 
lie close to Jesus Christ, His sweetness will flow 
through our very lives and make them fragrant 
and precious for ever. 



VII 
THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 



VII 

THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 

" In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His 
presence saved them," — ISA. Ixiii. 9. 

There is a difference between our theories 
about God and our thoughts of God. If you and 
I were perfect in knowledge and wisdom, if there 
were no separation between our intellectual and 
practical life, if reason and love were in complete 
harmony, if we really knew all that we feel and 
really felt all that we know, then, of course, there 
would not be any possibility of such a difference. 
Our theories about God, which are our theology, 
and our thoughts of God, which are our reHgion, 
would be in clear and sweet and perfect unity. And 
surely this would be a blessed and happy thing 
for us; this would be true spiritual peace and 
joy ; this would be the deepest inward rest and 
satisfaction. 

Let me try to make this plain to you. 
You have a theory of friendship. You reason 
about it as something of which human nature is 

125 



126 THE OPEN DOOR 

capable. You form a conception of its different 
elements, of its true conditions, of its modes of 
action, of its powers and possibilities. And that 
theory of friendship is a good thing for you to 
have. It is precious. It elevates and cheers your 
mind. But presently, as you go on your way 
through the world, you find a friend: one who 
comes close to you in that mysterious contact of 
personalities which is the most wonderful thing in 
the world; one who knows you, cares for you, 
loves you, gives you the sacred gifts of fellow- 
ship and help. Trouble befalls you. Your friend 
stands by you, strengthens you, counsels you, 
helps you to fight your way out of that which is 
conquerable and to endure patiently that which is 
inevitable. Sorrow enters your house. Your 
friend is there, sharing your grief, bearing it with 
you and for you, coming closer to you than ever 
before, and quieting your wounded heart with 
sympathy, 

** Like the song of a mother who soothes into rest 
The tired child lying at peace on her breast." 

And now your theories of friendship are translated 
into your thoughts of your friend. They are 
clarified, corrected it may be, purified and inten- 
sified if your experience is a deep and true one ; 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 127 

at all events, they are transformed into something 
very different from what they were before. Once 
you reasoned about them; now you feel them. 
Once they belonged to your philosophy; now 
they belong to your life. Once you believed in 
friendship ; now you trust your friend. 

It seems to me that it is just this strange and 
beautiful transformation of abstract theory into 
living thought that God means to work out in our 
relations with Him by the experience of life. He 
reveals certain truths to us about Himself. Or, 
if you Hke to put it in another way, reason leads us 
to certain conclusions in regard to Him. He is 
infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, 
wisdom, power, righteousness, holiness, justice, 
goodness, and truth. We beHeve that. Our minds 
assent to such a noble statement. Yes, but God 
wants us to go beyond that. He wants us to 
know Him; for only personal knowledge, only 
knowledge that is woven into the very fabric of 
our souls, abides with us for ever. 

Our theories about God are our theology. It is 
well to value them, to be careful of them, to try 
our best to keep them pure and high. But the 
deeper question is. What is our religion ? What 
are our real thoughts of God ? In that deep and 
secret place of our inmost consciousness, where 



128 THE OPEN DOOR 

all our desires and feelings and hopes and aspira- 
tions are born, what is God to us ? This is the 
great question, the searching question. And on 
the answer to it our peace, our happiness, our 
usefulness depend. 

We say that God is perfect in wisdom. But do 
we feel that He is wise for us ? Do we trust His 
wisdom to guide and direct us ? Do we think of 
Him as the one who always knows what is best 
for us ? 

We say that God is perfect in righteousness. 
But do we know Him as " the Lord, our righteous- 
ness"? Do we trust assuredly in Him to cleanse 
us from the guilt and deliver us from the power 
of sin ? Do we yield ourselves to His will and 
purpose to purify and perfect us by the discipline 
of life ? 

We say that God is omnipresent : — 

" His dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things," 

It is a grand doctrine, an inspiring doctrine, this 
of the Divine omnipresence. But do we think 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 129 

of God as present with us personally in all the 
experiences of life? Such a thought of Him is 
infinitely more needful, infinitely more precious 
than any theory of His omnipresence. 

Go back to the illustration that we drew from 
the theory of friendship. You know that a true 
friendship must have in it a wide and generous 
sympathy with all the trouble that there is in the 
world. But when trouble comes to you, you want 
to be sure that your friend knows of it, and feels 
it, and is ready to help you bear it. A general 
thought of your friend's goodness is not enough. 
What you long for is the saving presence of a 
personal sympathy. 

It is not otherwise in our relation to God. 
What we want, to speak plainly, is to feel that 
God knows what happens to us, and is with us 
while it happens, and loves us steadily and ten- 
derly through it all. The time when we want this 
most is in the time of affliction, because that is 
the time when it is hardest to find, and yet with- 
out it we must perish in despair. In prosperity, 
in happiness, we feel that we can get on, after a 
fashion, without God. But when the clouds 
gather around us and the storms descend, when 
our dreams are broken and our dearest treasures 
take wings and fly away, then we know that to 
9 



I30 THE OPEN DOOR 

be without God in the world is to be without 
hope. Soon or late that time comes to every 
man and woman. Soon or late we cross the dry- 
places where we must be unutterably lonely unless 
God is with us. Soon or late the path of life dips 
down into the shadowed valley where we must 
walk in darkness and stumble among the graves 
unless the Lord God giveth us light. And so it 
seems to me that this text of ours is like a lamp 
which the prophet kindles and puts into our 
hands that we may use it when we need it. 

You may not all of you feel that you have any 
necessity for it just now. There may be some 
of you to whom the world seems all bright; 
life smooth and pleasant; the ways of Provi- 
dence as plain and easy to understand as a child's 
picture book. But some day or other you 
will stumble over something and fall, and when 
you rise and look about you the world will be 
changed : it will look very dark and mysterious ; 
many things will seem to be against you ; there 
will be conflicts and fears ; you will stand face to 
face with that which dismays you and makes 
your heart shrink within you in terror of great 
darkness. Probably most of you have known 
something of that experience already. Bright 
as your lives have been, some shadows have 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 131 

fallen upon them. Even the young, the strong, 
the fortunate, the light-hearted, have their dis- 
appointments, their misgivings, their trials, their 
afflictions. " If thou hast run with the footmen, 
and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou 
contend with horses ? and if in the land of peace, 
wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then 
how wilt thou do in the swelHng of Jordan?" 
Yes, we all of us need something of the strength 
and cheer and comfort and guidance which dwell 
in this word of the prophet. Let us try to see 
what it means to translate the theory of God's 
omnipresence into the living thought that God is 
with us in all the trials and troubles of life. Let 
us try to learn how it is that the angel of God's 
presence saves us in the midst of our afflictions. 

L This truth cannot mean anything to us un- 
less we realize what kind of a presence it is of 
which the prophet speaks. And surely this 
ought not to be hard to discover and understand. 
He looks backward over the tribulations and 
distresses of Israel, this man of God, himself a 
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as 
he surveys the long story of troubles and suffer- 
ing he sees God's presence shining through it 
all, like the face of a friend. In the joy of this 
vision the prophet speaks for God. " In all their 



132 THE OPEN DOOR 

affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His 
face " — the angel who stands before His face con- 
tinually, or, it may be, the angel who repre- 
sents and reveals Him as the face reveals the 
spirit — " the angel of His face saved them." 

Now surely this means, first of all, a gracious, 
friendly, loving, sympathizing presence. God is 
with us in our troubles, not merely because He 
has to be there, since He is everywhere. He is 
there because He wants to be. Just as truly as 
you desire to be near your friends, your children, 
when they suffer, just so truly does God desire 
and choose to be near us in our afflictions. He 
would not be away from us even if He could. 
He is not present as a mere spectator, looking at 
us curiously while we suffer. That cold and dis- 
tant conception of Him as the great on-looker, — 

" Who sees with equal eyes as God of all 
A hero perish or a sparrow fall," 

is not the thought of the Bible. He is with us 
as one who has the deepest interest in it all, feels 
all that happens to us, cares infinitely for us 
through it all. Nor is He present merely as the 
author of our pains and sorrows who could have 
spared us from them if He would, but who insists 
upon inflicting them on us, whatever it may cost 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 133 

us to bear them. It costs Him as much as it 
costs us. " He doth not willingly afflict nor grieve 
the children of men." There is a wondrous 
power in the precise words in which the prophet 
voices this profound truth. Literally they are 
translated, " In all their adversity He was no 
adversary." 

How that thought glows with light ! The 
deepest gloom of adversity comes from the idea 
that God must be against us. How can He be 
good and yet afflict the world so bitterly ? How 
can He be loving and yet pierce us with the 
arrows of pain, and torture us with loathsome 
diseases, and crush our hearts with disappoint- 
ment, and smite the innocent little children with 
death? We must face the question, for it is a 
part of our life. We cannot run away from it. 
We ought not to cover it up with flowery words. 
The only answer to it comes along the line of 
this blessed text. 

Even in the midst of our adversities God is not 
our adversary. These things are not His works. 
They are the works of human sin and folly and 
perversity — a strange power, a hostile power — 
hostile to Him as to us. Why He has permitted 
it to enter the world we cannot understand. 
Surely He would not have done so if it had not 



134 THE OPEN DOOR 

been necessary. And surely there is no necessity 
with God which is not a means of ultimate and 
transcendent good: — 

" At last, far off, at last to all." 

But now that evil is here, with all its attendant 
train of suffering, God is with us, not as our 
enemy in causing the pain, but as our Father and 
Friend in sharing it. 

There is nothing that we regret with pure 
hearts that He does not regret far more. There 
is nothing that makes us honestly sorry that 
does not give Him an infinitely deeper sorrow. 
Do we grieve as we think of the anguish of the 
many generations of the children of men ? He 
grieves far more profoundly. " His soul was 
grieved," says the prophet, " for the misery of 
Israel." Does it fill us with pain that death has 
entered this beautiful world, and walks to and 
fro among the springing flowers and the sing- 
ing birds, and touches our fairest and loveliest 
with his cold hand and lays them low? The 
pain, the pity, the deep regret of it all is infi- 
nitely greater in the Divine heart. Death as we 
know it, on the earthly side — the suffering, the 
separation, the darkness — death as we know it and 
shrink from it, is God's enemy just as truly as it is 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 135 

ours. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed 
is death." It is the other side of death, the side 
that we do not know, the side that God has 
made to counterbalance and conquer this dark 
and painful side, the messenger that leads the 
soul into peace and light and joy, that is God's 
friend, God's angel. And while we suffer in this 
world from death as a bereavement, an affliction, 
while we endure the manifold ills that flesh is 
heir to, while we are disappointed and troubled 
and distressed, God is with us as one who bears 
our grief and carries our sorrow. 

Do you say that it is hard to think of God as 
thus entering into our afflictions ? Yes, it is hard. 
And yet there were men even before Christ came, 
as our text proves, who rose to the nobility of 
that thought of a sympathizing God who suffers 
with us. And if we believe that God revealed 
Himself in Christ to draw the world unto Him- 
self, then surely it ought to be possible for us to 
lay firm hold upon the thought of the Divine 
sympathy in all our afflictions. 

What sorrow is equal to His sorrow ? Do you 
think His tears at the grave of Lazarus did not 
come from the heart? Though He knew all — 
resurrection, immortality, heaven — yet Jesus wept 
at the sadness of death. Do you think His tears 



136 THE OPEN DOOR 

over Jerusalem did not come from the heart? 
Though He knew all — the victory of His atoning 
death, the triumph of His faith — yet Jesus lifted 
up His voice and wept over the sufferings of men. 
Do you think the drops of blood in the garden 
did not come from the heart ? Though He knew 
all — the merit of His sacrifice, the joy of His re- 
ward, the glory of His kingdom — yet the soul of 
Jesus was exceeding sorrowful even unto death. 
Ah, my friend, don't you know the meaning of 
this ? When we look on Jesus Christ as the re- 
vealer of the heart of God, what affliction of our 
mortal life is there into which it does not bring 
God as our fellow-sufferer ? " In all our afflic- 
tion He is afflicted, and the angel of His face 
saves us." 

11. God's presence with us in the time of trou- 
ble is then a personal, gracious, loving, sympa- 
thizing presence. But more than this, it is a cov- 
enanted presence, it is promised and promised 
for ever, for all time and in every experience. 
The text teaches us this. The angel of His 
face is none other than the angel of the cove- 
nant in whom God's pledge to be with His people 
for ever is redeemed. Turn back to the ancient 
Scriptures and hear Him give this pledge to 
Jacob : " Behold, I am with thee, and will keep 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 137 

thee in all places whither thou goest, ... for I 
will not leave thee, until I have done that which 
I have spoken to thee of." Hear His promise to 
Joshua : " I will not fail thee nor forsake thee." 
Hear His promise through Isaiah : " I the Lord 
will hear thee ; I the God of Israel will not for- 
sake thee. When thou passest through the 
waters I will be with thee, and through the 
rivers they shall not overflow thee. And even 
to your old age I am He, and even to hoar hairs 
will I carry you ; I have made and I will bear, 
even I will carry and will deliver you." And 
then hear the pledge of Jesus Christ : " I will 
not leave you comfortless : I will come to you. 
Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world." 

As long as God lives and our souls live, so long 
does this pledge stand. It is true, we cannot 
always feel this presence. But we can always 
know that it is there, always think of it, so long 
as thought endures, always rest upon it for ever 
and for ever : and the reason why this promise is 
given is that we may hold fast to this truth. 

There may be a moment in the very depth of 
sorrow and anguish when the presence is hidden 
from us. But it is not because God is absent. 
It is because we are stunned, unconscious. It is 



138 THE OPEN DOOR 

like passing through a surgical operation. The 
time comes for the ordeal. The anaesthetic is 
ready. You are about to become unconscious. 
You stretch out your hand to your friend, 
" Don't leave me, don't forsake me." The last 
thing that you feel is the clasp of that hand, 
the last thing you see is the face of that friend. 
Then a moment of darkness, a blank — and the 
first thing you feel is the hand; the first thing 
you see is the face of love again. So the angel 
of God's face stands by us, bends above us, 
and we may know that He will be there even 
when all else fails. Our friends die, our posses- 
sions take wings and fly away, our honors fade, 
our strength fails, but beside every moldering 
ruin and every open grave, in the fading light of 
every sunset, in the gathering gloom of every 
twilight, amid the mists that shroud the great 
ocean beyond the verge of mortal life, there is one 
sweet, mighty voice that says, " I will never leave 
thee, nor forsake thee. In all thy afflictions I will 
be with thee, and the angel of My face shall save 
thee." 

III. Well, then, if this is how we are to think 
of the presence of God in our lives, as a personal, 
sympathizing, loving presence, pledged to us for 
all times and all possible occasions, it ought to 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 139 

be easy for us to see how it will save us. The 
power of such a thought of God always with us, 
and most of all in our times of weakness and trial 
and trouble, must be a redeeming, delivering, up- 
bearing power. 

I. It must save us, first of all, from the sense 
of meanness, littleness, unworthiness which 
embitters life and makes sorrow doubly hard to 
bear. The presence of God must bring a sense 
of dignity, of elevation into our existence. It 
was a great king who once said, " Where I sleep, 
there is the palace." The life that has the pres- 
ence of God in it can be neither trivial nor 
unworthy. 

Our daily existence sometimes seems to us a 
thing of small account. It appears to be made up 
of endless petty tasks and a few petty pleasures 
and many petty trials. It produces no great re- 
sults, makes no large mark on the page of history, 
contributes no striking figure to the panorama of 
the world. We just go on attending to the details 
of business in a small office, or keeping house in 
a quiet street ; and the children are a Httle larger 
this year than they were last year; and we have a 
few more gray hairs ; and we have managed to 
meet our obligations fairly well. But we wonder 
what we were sent into the world for. 



I40 THE OPEN DOOR 

My friend, you were sent into the world to live 
your life with God. If He can come into this life 
of yours you ought to think well of it. It ought 
to be adorned and ennobled by His presence. 
All its daily duties, all its small dehghts — for 
there is no life so narrow that it has not room for 
the spirit of joy — should seem to you refined and 
uplifted by the Divine participation in them. Let 
us get out of the false notion that the only way 
to be dignified is to be distinguished, the only way 
to be good is to be heroic, the only way to help 
the world is to make a sensation, the only way to 
serve Christ is to do something big. Let us learn 
that the whole Christian life, whether it is lived on 
a scale of miles or of inches, is a beautiful and 
worthy life, and that what God requires of us is 
not to accompHsh anything wonderful, but to do 
justice and love mercy and walk humbly with our 
God. God has two thrones — one in the highest 
heaven, one in the lowHest heart. 

2. The angel of God's face saves us also from 
that feeling of reckless indifference, dumb care- 
lessness, which sometimes tempts us to let our 
lives go blundering and stumbling along on the 
lower levels. It brings a new conscience into 
our thoughts, desires, and efforts, awakens a 
noble dissatisfaction with our half-hearted work. 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 141 

quickens within us a longing to be more fit for 
the Divine companionship. 

It is one mark of a good friend that he makes 
you wish to be at your best while you are with 
him. The blessed persons who have this influ- 
ence are made in the likeness of that heavenly 
Friend whose presence is at once a stimulus and 
a help to purity of heart and nobleness of de- 
meanor. A man's reputation is what his fellow- 
men think of him. A man's character is what 
God knows of him. When we feel that the angel 
of His face is with us, a careless life, a superficial 
life no longer satisfies us. We long to be pure 
in heart, strong in purpose, clean in deed, because 
we know that nothing else will satisfy Him. 

3. The angel of God's face saves us from the 
sense of weakness, ignorance, incompetence, 
which often overwhelms us in the afflictions of 
life. We feel not only that we are powerless to pro- 
tect ourselves against trouble, but that we are not 
able to get the good out of it that ought to come 
to us. We cannot interpret our sorrows aright. 
We cannot see the real meaning of them. We 
cannot reach our hand through the years to catch 
"the far-off interest of tears." We say to ourselves 
in despair, " God only knows what it means." 
And if we do not believe that God is with us, then 



142 THE OPEN DOOR 

that thought shuts us up in the darkness, puts the 
interpretation of the mystery far away from us, 
locks us up in the prison house of sorrow and 
leaves the key in heaven. But if we believe that 
God is with us, then the word of despair becomes 
a word of hope. " God only knows " — yes, but 
God truly knows, and He is with us to teach us. 
He is overruHng our trouble so that it shall turn 
to good for us and for those whom we love and 
for all the world. He knows the joy and peace 
that have come to those whom we have lost, and 
He bids us sorrow not for them as those who 
have no hope. He has undertaken to be our 
Guide, our Teacher, our Master, through all the 
sorrow of this mortal Hfe. He is making the pres- 
ent light afflictions work out for us a far more 
exceeding weight of glory. He is making us per- 
fect through suffering. 

This is what He says to us in Christ : " In the 
world ye shall have tribulations : but be of good 
cheer; I have overcome the world." Yes, sorrow 
is real, sorrow is bitter, but sorrow with God is 
the path that leads to a larger, richer life. 

4. The angel of God's face saves us from the 
sense of loneliness, which is unbearable. Com- 
panionship is essential to happiness. A solitary 
Eden would have been no Paradise. The deepest 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 143 

of all miseries is the sense of absolute isolation. 
There are moments in the experience of most of 
us when the mysterious consciousness of the law 
which made all human souls separate, Hke islands, 

" And bade betwixt their shores to be 
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea," 

fills US with heaviness of heart. In this painful 
solitude the present friendship of God is the only 
sure consolation. Nothing can divide us from 
Him — not misunderstanding, nor coldness, nor 
selfishness, nor scorn — for none of these things 
are possible to Him. Nothing can divide us from 
Him except our own sin, and that He has forgiven 
and taken away and blotted out by His great 
mercy in Christ. 

A few years ago a man of great talent, famous 
for his eloquence, but even better known for the 
entire unbelief in God which he proclaimed, was 
called to dehver a funeral address over the grave 
of his brother. In words of sombre pathos he 
compared this life to a narrow, green valley be- 
tween the cold peaks of two eternities. We walk 
here for a little while in company with those 
whom we love. Then our hands are loosed and 
our companions vanish. We can see but a little 



144 THE OPEN DOOR 

way. Beyond the encircling hills all is gloom 
and nothingness. 

How different is the voice of one whose heart 
has known and trusted the angel of the face of 
God ! " Yea, though I walk through the valley 
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for 
Thou art with me ; Thy rod and Thy staff they 
comfort me." 

Companionship is the one thing in the world 
which is absolutely essential to happiness. The 
human heart needs fellowship more than anything 
else, fellowship which is elevated and enduring, 
stronger and purer than itself, and centered in that 
which death cannot change. All its springs are 
in God. Without Him Hfe is a failure and all 
beyond is a blank. Even reason perceives that 
the recognition of His being and presence makes 
life as different from that which either theoretical 
or practical atheism can produce, as light is 
from darkness. There is absolutely nothing that 
man cannot do without, except God. With Him 
happiness is possible anywhere and always. In 
deepest perils and darkest prisons, in the languor 
of sickness and the loneHness of sorrow, in the 
narrow house of poverty and the fiery furnace of 
pain, on the cross of disgrace and in the black 
shadow of death, men and women have been 



THE ANGEL OF GOD'S FACE 145 

happy because God was with them. Yea, they 
have sung praises so that the other prisoners have 
heard them. Call to mind your own experience. 
How often has the angel of His face delivered 
you ! How often have you trembled, in the dis- 
tance, at the chained lions between which you 
passed unharmed into House Beautiful. How 
often have you said of evil : " This will surely 
destroy me." Yet you found when the trouble 
came that you had strength given you to bear it, 
and that you came out of it as one returns from 
a perilous and difficult journey with a friend, with 
new memories of companionship and new proofs 
of love. 

We talk of our possessions — of what we own. 
What are they all compared with the presence 
and friendship of God? 

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, 

The sun forbear to shine, 
But God, who called me here below, 

Shall be for ever mine." 



VIII 
REAL LIFE 



VIII 

REAL LIFE 

"Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and 
the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son 
of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." — Gal. ii. 20. 

St. Paul is here telling secrets, unveiling hidden 
things. Beneath that knowledge of the facts and 
laws of physical life which we call science, there 
is another and a deeper knowledge of the true 
fountain of life which we call religion. Into this 
knowledge St. Paul leads us when he says, " I 
live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 

Life, as we see it with our outward eyes, is a 
play, an illusion, a masquerade. Men and women 
are going to and fro on the earth, busy with many 
tasks, pursuing many pleasures. They come into 
various relations with one another in business, in 
society, in education, in service, in government. 
They are bound together in organizations, in 
families, in trades, in nations ; they are arrayed 
against one another in rivalries of commerce, of 
politics, of class interest. It is like an immense 
and unending dance. The figures are curiously 

149 



I50 THE OPEN DOOR 

arranged, intricate, for ever changing — now peace- 
ful, now warlike — but always the dance goes on, 
tracing strange patterns and evolving new combi- 
nations. The performers become acquainted. They 
know one another's costumes and masks and parts. 
They admire or dislike, they applaud or condemn, 
their fellows. They exchange greetings, they 
clasp hands, they turn and pass one another, they 
form new groups and figures, they are for ever 
meeting and parting for ever. 

Underneath this wonderful masquerade are the 
real people. And among them two great mys- 
teries are going on — two great realities, and only 
two — the mystery of death and the mystery of 
life. These realities are often hidden from us, lost 
and forgotten under the veil of illusion. We give 
ourselves up to the play completely and mistake 
the masks for the faces. We fancy that we are 
moving only in a world of mere performers, skillful 
or awkward, rich or poor, friendly or hostile, gay 
or gloomy. But we forget that we are really 
moving in a world of dying souls and living souls. 
This is what the Bible reveals to us. Its voice is 
like the bell which rings in the midst of the 
festivity, bidding the performers unmask and 
know one another and themselves. 

I. Here under this masquerade are dying souls. 



REAL LIFE 151 

It is appointed unto all men once to die. Every 
one must come to the end of his figure, take his 
last step, and vanish. This is a truism. But this 
is not what I mean. 

It is also appointed unto all men to die daily. 
There is a process of perishing which goes on at 
every moment through all the movement, action, 
exertion of life. At birth a secret reservoir of 
vitality is filled for us. We do not know how 
much it contains. But every day we draw out a 
certain portion. We cannot tell how much is 
left, but certainly less to-day than there was yes- 
terday. It was not the last voyage that wore out 
the steamship. The first voyage did it just as 
truly. When you wind up your new watch you 
begin to use it up. The first turn that tightens 
the spring would be the turn to break it, if you 
could transpose it from its place at the begin- 
ning to the end of the process. At every step 
something departs from us. With every smile 
something fades. This also is a truism. But this 
is not what I mean. 

The truth that presses upon me is that there is 
an absorption, a sinking, a spending of the soul 
in this limited, perishing existence, a gradual los- 
ing of the soul, a secret dying of the soul, which 
is going on in the world all the time — and this 



152 THE OPEN DOOR 

is the real death. To have our affection, our 
controlling, inmost desire set on earthly things is 
to belong to them. To belong to them is to fade 
with them. Infidelity is practical faith in things 
seen and unfaith in things unseen. Keep your 
eyes shut long enough and you will go bHnd. 
Keep your soul earth-bound long enough and 
you will sink into dust. Sin is the preference of 
the sensual to the spiritual. The preference be- 
comes a habit, the habit a character, the character 
a destiny. To be carnally minded is death, but to 
be spiritually minded is life and peace. 

II. Life and peace — peace in life, and life in 
peace — that is the other great reality under the 
masquerade. How quickly and how gladly our 
hearts turn to it : — 

" Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 
No life that breathes with human breath 
Hath ever truly longed for death. 

"'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh, life, not death, for which we pant. 
More life and fuller that we want." 

This is the second great mystery that is going on 
in the world. The satisfaction of this want, the 
quenching of this thirst for immortality, the quick- 
ening of a new and more abundant life which is 



REAL LIFE 153 

neither bound to, nor dependent upon, the vanish- 
ing unrealities of the masquerade of sense — this is 
the great, beautiful secret that St. Paul tells us in 
the text. This indeed is the secret of the New- 
Testament. The sacred Scripture of the Egyptians 
was called " The Book of the Dead." Our Scripture 
ought to be called " The Book of the Living." 
V Its central message is that life and immortality 
are brought to light in Jesus. " He that believeth 
on the Son hath everlasting life " — not will have it 
in some future world — but hath it even now in 
this vanishing, perishing masquerade of a world — 
hath something which makes life real and earnest 
and imperishable. This is the secret of Jesus ; a 
vital secret. ''I am come," said He, "that they 
might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly." 

What was it that He said to the tempter in 
the wilderness ? It was the denial of the great 
heresy of worldliness. " Man shall not live by 
bread alone." And what was the explanation 
of this saying that He gave in the sixth chapter 
of St. John's Gospel ? It was the cure of the 
great error of other-worldliness, the waiting for 
immortality until we come into some future state 
of existence. " I am the bread of life. He that 
Cometh unto me shall never hunger. And he 



154 THE OPEN DOOR 

that believeth on me shall never thirst. Whoso 
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath 
eternal Hfe. The words that I speak unto you, 
they are spirit, and they are life." 

Surely this is a mystery. But just as surely it 
is a reality. Inward, men and women are being 
renewed day by day, while outward, men and 
women are perishing. Souls are being born 
again continually, not by the will of the flesh 
nor by the will of man, but by the word of the 
Lord, which liveth and abideth for ever — which 
word is Christ. Men are living by bread, but 
not by bread alone. Underneath the bounties 
which supply their temporal needs they are 
touching the hand which feeds their spiritual 
longings. In the wilderness they are finding 
heavenly manna. Living waters flow from the 
riven rocks of time and sense. Through the with- 
ering and fading leaves of mortaHty, as in a secret 
and perpetual springtide, their souls are pierced 
and quickened with 

" Bright shoots of everlastingness." 

Of this life Christ is the giver and the source. 
Christ is the bread of God which cometh down 
from heaven and giveth life unto the world. 
Christ is the living vine, and through Him flows 



REAL LIFE 



155 



every drop of immortality that renews the human 
branches and makes them glad with blossoms and 
fertile in everlasting fruits. 

If I should try to tell you how He does this I 
could but repeat the old story, and it would take 
for ever. For it is as long and as varied as the 
wide and deep experience of humanity. It reaches 
away back into the past, to those twihght days 
when the hope of Christ was the light of prophets 
and psalmists, and they watched for His coming 
as those that watch for the morning. It reaches 
away out into the darkness of heathen lands, 
where the longing for a Saviour, the blind crav- 
ing and groping for a Redeemer, is the sign and 
token of a hidden kingdom waiting for its King : — 

" Far and wide, though all unknowing, 
Pants for Thee each human breast; 
Human tears for Thee are flowing, 
Human hearts in Thee would rest." 

It reaches down through the ages, touching 
the infinite fullness of life that men have found in 
Christ, as He has shown them the glory of God, 
the beauty of holiness, the victory of self-sacrifice, 
the hatefulness of sin, the deceitfulness of pride 
and avarice and ambition and lust, the trust- 
worthiness of pity and meekness and purity 



156 THE OPEN DOOR 

and goodness, the victory that overcometh the 
world, the blessedness of sorrow, the humility of 
joy, the immortality of love — yes, and more than 
this — as He has communicated Himself to them 
through the open channels of faith, and made their 
broken, imperfect characters reflect some like- 
ness to His own flawless, perfect character. This 
would be the story of the giving of life by Jesus 
Christ to human souls ; and I could never tell it 
to you. No, it can never be all told until those 
whom He is redeeming out of every tribe and 
kindred and tongue are gathered about Him to 
sing His praise. The whole story of real life will 
not be completed until life itself, in all its myriad- 
souled perfection, is consummated, and death is 
dead. 

But two things in that story, two things which 
I believe are always repeated in the highest Chris- 
tian experience, stand revealed in this saying of 
the apostle. 

The life that I now live in the flesh I live by the 
faith of the So7t of God, who loved me and gave 
Himself for me. " In the flesh ": that is the out- 
ward form of it. A human form, an actual form, 
an existence of present duties and labors and 
conflicts and sorrows and joys. That is the 
shell, the vessel in which it is contained. But 



REAL LIFE 157 

the life itself, the secret, inward spring of vitality 
comes from believing that Jesus loved me and 
gave Himself for me, and that He who held 
me in His heart and died for me on the cross is 
none other than the Son of God. 

Don't you see how this faith quickens real 
life ? Don't you see how it is Hfe, new, heaven- 
born, everlasting ? 

I. Surely there is nothing else in all the world 
so life-giving as the knowledge that we are loved. 
Even in our human relationships, when this knowl- 
edge comes to us it lifts us out of the dust and 
thrills us with vital power. How many a heart 
has been revived and emancipated, enlarged and 
ennobled, by knowing that somewhere in the 
world there was another heart moving toward it 
in the tenderness and glory of love. And when 
that love takes the form of sacrifice, when it re- 
signs and endures and suffers for our sake, then 
its power to move and quicken us is deepened and 
enhanced a thousandfold. Even when the sacrifice 
has been made without our knowledge, when the 
evidence of it comes to us long after it is over, 
when we turn over the letters or the diary of 
some one who has gone from us, and it flashes 
upon us that we have been carried tenderly 
upon a loving heart, that for our sake some 



158 THE OPEN DOOR 

sharp pain has been borne, some great offering 
has been made, this flash of knowledge is like 
the waking of a new life in our hearts. This is 
what it means to see Jesus Christ as our Saviour. 
It is to know that His love for us was so great 
that He died upon the cross to save us from our 
sins. He loved you and me personally. He died 
for you and me personally. If there were but one 
sinner in all the world, and I were that sinner, 
still Jesus Christ would have loved me and died 
for me. 

There was a prisoner in one of the dungeons 
at the time of the French Revolution who was 
much beloved by many people. But there was 
one love which surpassed them all. It was the 
love of his father ; and this was the proof of it. 
The two men bore the same name, and when the 
son's name was called one day among those who 
were to die, the father answered to it, and took 
his place, and went to the scaffold, and laid his 
head upon the block. The blade of the guillotine 
flashed ; the head fell ; the father died for the son 
he loved. That is what Christ has done for us. 
When we believe this we know what love means. 
When we know what love means we feel the only 
real life. 

II. But think what it means to know that this 



REAL LIFE 159 

love which has done so much for us is the love 
of the Son of God. It sets the seal of eternity 
upon it. It brings the power of almightiness into 
it. It lifts the sacrifice of Jesus, and lifts us with 
it, up into the very heart of God. " It is God that 
justifieth. Who is he that condemneth ? It is 
Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, 
who is ever at the right hand of God, who also 
maketh intercession for us." To beheve that this 
love of Christ, from which nothing can separate 
us, is none other than the Divine Love, the same 
that created us, and created us for Himself; to 
believe that this sacrifice of Christ is none other 
than the Divine sacrifice, the one event in all the 
world that reveals God most perfectly — surely 
this is a faith so deep, so wide, so high that the 
more we feel it the less we can utter it ; it is a 
life. Therefore it cannot be spoken or explained. 
It must be lived. And if we live it we know that 
we shall never die. 

Come then, and let us testify to this hidden 
life, and renew it, and refresh it, in communion 
with Christ. In this world we must be either 
dying daily, or daily living in immortality ; wither- 
ing away in dreams or awaking to glorious reali- 
ties ; perishing with the sensual or surviving with 
the spiritual; vanquished or victorious. Let us 



i6o THE OPEN DOOR 

not lose our life in the world, but let us find it in 
Christ. Let us come near to Him and touch 
Him and join ourselves to Him. Then be still for 
a moment — utterly still in silent faith — until we 
feel the pulse of His love like the throbbing of 
our heart. Then go forth to live in the world — 
bravely, earnestly, happily — because we know 
that love is the real life, and the love of the 
Son of God in us is the real life that can never 
die. 



APR 27 1903 



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